PTSD Treatment: What Are the Most Effective Therapy Options

Recovering from trauma can often be troublesome and agonizingly slow. What works for one individual may not help another person. Because individuals respond to trauma differently, and the effects of trauma can be convoluted.

Trauma can cause neurological, physiological, and emotional effects. Some are much longer-lasting, while others are short-lived. When trauma affects start disturbing daily life, you may be experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to PTSD therapists in Chicago, around 10 to 20 percent of individuals who experience trauma will develop PTSD symptoms afterward. But, with effective PTSD therapy, all these symptoms can be cured.

This article outlines several PTSD therapy options, but before that, let’s have a look at what happens when you experience a traumatic event?

Have a look!

In this situation, your pituitary, hypothalamic, and adrenal systems release a surge of hormones to prepare you to fight, flee, or freeze. Resulting, your breathing quickening, your muscles tense, and your pulse is speeding up. Your vision may narrow, you may seem to go blank, and you might feel panic.

Several PTSD Therapy Options

Several therapeutic approaches and medications have been shown effective in treating PTSD. Let’s look at each of these treatment options in detail:

●       Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy, also known as talk therapy, is an effective PTSD treatment that aims to identify and eliminate or control troubling symptoms. So a person can perform better.

There are two types of psychotherapy:

1. Cognitive processing therapy:

Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a specific type of intellectual, a social treatment that has been effective in diminishing symptoms of PTSD.

CPT is generally delivered in twelve sessions and assists patients in figuring out how to challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma.

In this way, the patient creates a new understanding and conceptualization of the horrible accident to lessen its adverse consequences on current life.

2. Prolonged exposure therapy

Prolonged exposure therapy is a kind of behavior therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. It helps individuals confront fears and teaches them to approach trauma-related memories, situations, and feelings gradually.

This is done by effectively defying the things that an individual apprehension. By confronting dreaded circumstances, thoughts, and emotions, an individual can discover that anxiety and fear will decrease on their own.

●       Neurological Therapies

1. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) 

EMDR or Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is an organized treatment that urges the patient to focus on the traumatic event while experiencing bilateral invigoration (typically eye movements) at the same time, which is related to a reduction in emotion associated with the trauma memories.

An EMDR treatment session can last up to one and a half-hour. In this session, your therapist will move their fingers back and forth in your face, and you have to follow these hand movements with your eyes. At the same time, the EMDR specialists will ask you to recall a traumatic event. This will include the emotions and body sensations that go along with it.

As per the 2018 review, it has been found that EMDR can prove useful in reducing several PTSD symptoms, including anxiety, fatigue, depression, and paranoid thought patterns.

2. Emotional freedom technique (tapping)

Tapping is one component of the clinical emotional freedom technique (EFT).

It’s like acupressure, a sort of back rub treatment that utilizes physical pressure on certain sensitive points to relieve pain and muscle tension.

In 4 to 10 sessions, a professional therapist can teach you how to tap certain rhythms on your face, hands, head, and collarbones while you actively reframe your memories of a horrible mishap.

This technique is often used along with exposure and cognitive therapies.

Wrapping Up-:

Along with all these therapies, there are some medicines and at-home coping tools that help patients to overcome PTSD. However, consulting an experienced therapist or doctor is vital to learn your treatment options.