PTSD Therapy: Ways To Move Forward And Heal From Trauma
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Post-traumatic stress disorder, often referred to as PTSD, is a stress disorder that develops after someone has experienced a frightening or dangerous event. While most people recover from the initial emotional and psychological reaction of a traumatic event, those who experience prolonged stress may develop PTSD. In this article, we’ll explore different treatment options for PTSD and how people diagnosed with PTSD can cope with and manage their symptoms.
What is PTSD?
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious mental illness that can develop after a person has experienced a traumatic event. A traumatic event is any experience that is so distressing that is causes a person emotional and psychological harm. Some examples of traumatic events that may lead to the development of PTSD include:
- Being a victim of a crime, especially a violent crime
- Experiencing an accident
- Surviving a natural disaster
- Living in or fleeing a war zone, either as a civilian or as a soldier
- Being bullied in a school or workplace setting
- Experiencing childhood abuse, emotional abuse, or domestic violence
- Surviving physical or sexual assault
- Losing a loved one to violence
What are the symptoms of PTSD?
Symptoms of PTSD can exist on a spectrum, meaning that it’s possible for different people with PTSD to have different symptoms and experiences, even if they experienced similar traumatic events. PTSD symptoms can affect a person emotionally, behaviorally, and cognitively.
Emotional symptoms of PTSD
- Anhedonia, or an inability to experience pleasure
- Loss of interest in activities one used to enjoy
- Persistent sense of fear, horror, anger, or shame
- Irritability
- Heightened risk of developing other mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety
- Negative mood
- Exaggerated startle response
- Sense of detachment or distance from other people and the world
- Feelings of guilt, often related to surviving a traumatic event when others did not, or blaming oneself for the traumatic event occurring
Behavioral symptoms of PTSD
- Unpredictable and often angry outbursts
- Flashbacks, in which one believes they are re-experiencing the traumatic event
- Verbal or physical aggression toward others
- Difficulty sleeping, often because of nightmares related to the traumatic event
- Reckless, risky, or self-destructive behavior
- Substance use
- Avoiding situations, people, places, emotions, thoughts, or memories that are associated with the traumatic event
- Holding negative core beliefs about the world or oneself, such as “No one should be trusted,” or “I am permanently damaged”
Cognitive symptoms of PTSD
- Memory loss, especially memories associated with the traumatic event
- Difficulty concentrating
- Hypervigilance
- Dissociation, usually in the form of derealization (when a person senses that the world around them has been altered, i.e., like they are looking at it through blurred glass) or depersonalization (when a person senses that they are not physically present in their body, i.e., they are looking down on themselves from above)
Treatment options for PTSD
While PTSD can lead to the development of serious mental health problems, there are also a number of ways to treat the condition and manage symptoms.
Talk therapy
One effective way to begin PTSD treatment may be talk therapy, where a person can speak with a mental health professional. Typically, to treat PTSD, a client will have regular weekly or biweekly sessions where they talk to a counselor about the event they have experienced, their ongoing or newly developed symptoms, and other impacts on their relationships or emotional and mental health.
Talk therapy can take place in an individual therapy setting, where only the client and the therapist are present, or in group therapy. Sometimes, a mixture of individual and group therapy may be recommended. It can be beneficial to receive one-on-one attention from a therapist but also to connect with other people who are experiencing similar challenges related to processing traumatic events.
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can be one of the most effective talk therapy methods for treating PTSD symptoms. Cognitive behavioral therapy is generally based on the premise that thoughts and behaviors are closely related, and working to change unhelpful thought patterns can reduce the presence of problematic behaviors. Because such thought patterns can be integral to the negative core beliefs associated with PTSD, CBT can be a beneficial way of addressing PTSD symptoms.
CBT for PTSD typically involves talking through these distorted negative core beliefs and better understanding the impact these beliefs might be having on a client’s life as a whole. Over time, it can be possible to shift these beliefs in a more positive direction with CBT.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a relatively new technique to treat PTSD and other trauma- and stressor-related disorders, but it has been found to be quite promising and is now recommended as one of the first lines of PTSD treatment by the American Psychiatric Association.
EMDR therapy typically uses bilateral brain stimulation, meaning alternating between activating different sides of a client’s brain, usually by:
- The client holding a buzzer in each hand, with the two buzzers alternately vibrating
- The client following the therapist’s finger back and forth with their eyes
- The client sitting with their eyes closed and their hands held in loose fists, and the therapist alternately tapping on the backs of each of their hands
Online therapy
The anxiety and hypervigilance associated with PTSD can sometimes make the thought of leaving the house seem overwhelming. With online therapy, you can speak with a licensed therapist from the comfort of your own home. You can also message your therapist at any time, and they’ll respond when they’re available, which may be helpful if you’re navigating symptoms of stress throughout the day.
While some PTSD treatments, like EMDR therapy, may not be as effective in an online setting as they are in person, many forms of PTSD therapeutic interventions are still accessible and impactful in an online format. According to a 2022 study, online CBT for PTSD can be just as effective as in-person CBT. In this study, 196 participants diagnosed with mild to moderate PTSD either participated in in-person therapy sessions or online therapy sessions. Results showed that online therapy sessions were equally effective as in-person sessions and therefore may be a viable alternative treatment option to face-to-face therapy sessions.
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