How is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treated in therapy?

This is how to intervene in cases of post-traumatic stress disorder in a psychology center.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is a mental disorder that is usually very painful and disabling; therefore, it is very important to go to therapy to solve it as soon as possible, without letting the problem become too entrenched. However... how is this achieved?

In this article we will see how Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is treated in a psychotherapy center like ours.

What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

The Disorder by Post-traumatic Stress (TEPT) is a psychopathological disorder linked to trauma. This means that it arises after having experienced a traumatic event.PTSD is usually related to some catastrophe or violent or death-related experience, such as a car accident or an attempted murder.

What makes PTSD a psychopathological phenomenon is the after-effects it leaves in the person, which have to do with reliving over and over again the memories associated with the trauma and with the maintenance of an almost constant state of stress. This psychological disturbance can last for many years if it is not treated in psychotherapy.

Symptoms

Let us look in more detail at the symptoms that characterize PTSD.

1. Tendency to relive the traumatic experience through flashbacks

It is common for people with PTSD to suffer flashbacks about what happened to them. flashbacks about what happened to them (or what they think happened to them) during the event that caused the trauma.. At such moments, the person's attention is focused on very vivid memories that are accompanied by a great emotional charge, usually generating anxiety or anguish.

2. Avoidance of places that could trigger flashbacks

As a consequence of the discomfort produced by the flashbacks, the person begins to try to foresee when they will occur, and this predisposes him/her to avoid certain situations.

3. Nightmares

Nightmares are very frequent in people with PTSD, and many times they do not even have a real cause.and many times they are not even directly related to the content of the traumatic memories.

4. Irritability and explosions of frustration

Because PTSD leads the person to spend a lot of time under stress, he or she becomes more sensitive to anything that causes discomfort. Therefore, they are more likely to experience explosions of anger, and to be irritable in their social relationships.

5. Emotional fatigue

As a consequence of all the above, the person with PTSD spends a lot of time in a state of physical and mental exhaustion.

6. Dissociative symptoms

It is very common for people with PTSD to suffer from dissociative symptoms. Specifically, two: derealization and depersonalization, in which the person feels emotionally disconnected from their environment or their own body, respectively.

This is what PTSD treatment looks like at a psychology center.

These are some of the strategies and therapeutic resources used to treat PTSD.

1. Exposure technique

This is a therapeutic resource widely used in anxiety disorders in general. It consists of "training" the patient to become accustomed to that which produces anguish or anxiety, without trying to move away from it or to avoid it.without trying to move away from it either physically or mentally. Following the guidelines given by the psychotherapist, he manages to make his body adapt to this kind of situations, so that in the case of PTSD he loses respect for the trauma, stops mythologizing it and stops assuming that it is a wall against which he will crash emotionally.

2. Cognitive restructuring

Cognitive restructuring is one of the most widely used components of cognitive-behavioral therapy, as it has a wide variety of applications and is useful in the treatment of many disorders.

It consists of helping the patient to detect maladaptive thought patterns that reinforce the existence of the psychopathology, and to get rid of the maladaptive thoughts.and to get rid of the beliefs to which this problematic way of interpreting reality usually gives rise. For example, among people who have developed post-traumatic stress disorder, it is common for them to assume that they are predestined to suffer and to try to avoid situations capable of triggering flashbacks.

3. Image rewriting therapy

Image rewriting is a resource that helps to treat post-traumatic stress and its associated affectations, such as post-traumatic nightmares. It consists of recreating in the imagination the experience that gave rise to the trauma, reinterpreting it in a way that makes it easier to accept and process.

4. Application of emotional management guidelines

In psychotherapy, the normal thing is not to limit oneself to treating the specific problem for which the person has gone to the consultation: also we also try to encourage those habits that favor a greater capacity to manage emotions in general..

These measures to be adopted vary greatly depending on the characteristics of each patient, but some examples are relaxation techniques and Mindfulness, the establishment of routines to sleep well, guidelines for conflict management and expression of frustrations, etc.

Are you looking for professional support for post-traumatic stress?

If you think you have developed the typical symptoms of PTSD and are looking for psychotherapeutic support, contact our team of professionals. At Psychologists Majadahonda we attend both face-to-face and online therapy by video call, and we have many years of experience dealing with this type of psychopathologies. Our contact details are available here.

Bibliographical references:

• Azcárate Mengual, M. A. (2007). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Brain Injury. Madrid: Díaz de Santos.
• Bisson, J.; et. al. (2019). The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies New Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Methodology and Development Process. Journal of Traumatic Stress. 32(4): pp. 475 - 483.
• Rothschild, B. (2000). The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment. Nueva York: W.W. Norton & Company.
• Villalta, L.; Smith, P.; Hickin, N.; Stringaris, A. (2018). Emotion regulation difficulties in traumatized youth: a meta-analysis and conceptual review. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 27 (4): pp. 527 - 544.
• Waltman, S.H.; Shearer, D.; Moore, B.A. (2018). Management of Post-Traumatic Nightmares: a Review of Pharmacologic and Nonpharmacologic Treatments Since 2013. Current Psychiatry Reports. 20(12): 108.