PTSD: The Best Medicine? Focus on What’s Bothering You

There are three specific treatments that have the strongest scientific evidence showing they are safe and proven to work. These therapies are:

·         Cognitive Processing Therapy

·         Prolonged Exposure

·         Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Each therapy is different, but they all teach you how to process your trauma-related thoughts, memories, and feelings so that you can move on. For more on how these therapies work and evidence based treatment watch our short, informative videos.

Treatment: What to Expect

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

After a trauma, it’s common to have negative thoughts — like thinking what happened is your fault or that the world is very dangerous. CPT helps you learn to identify and change these thoughts. Changing how you think about the trauma can help change how you feel.

– Christopher J. Tyler, US Army (1996-2004)

Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE)

People with PTSD often work hard to avoid traumatic memories and things that remind them of the trauma. This can help you feel better in the moment, but in the long term it can keep you from recovering from PTSD by preventing you from processing what happened to you. In PE, you expose yourself to the memories, feelings, and situations that you’ve been avoiding. It sounds scary, but facing things you’re afraid of in a safe way can help you learn that you don’t need to avoid reminders of the trauma.

– Sarah Humphries, US Army (1994-2012)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR can help you process upsetting memories, thoughts and feelings by having you focus on images of the trauma. At the same time, the therapist introduces brief sets of back-and-forth eye movements, taps or tones. This helps your brain work through the traumatic memories. Over time, it changes how you react to memories of your trauma and how you feel about yourself.

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