Treatment Options for PTSD

Everyone experiences trauma in their lives, but how everyone responds to it is different. An event that may seem too little to you might be extremely traumatic to someone, and trauma recovery is a slow and difficult process. If you’re looking for PTSD Treatment, Pompano Beach has many options available. 

At The Sands Treatment Center, there are various treatment options and strategies. However, the sad reality is that an option that is successful for one may not work for the other. Here are a few treatment options you can opt for.

What is PTSD?

PTSD or post-traumatic stress disorder develops due to trauma in an individual’s life. Every human responds to trauma differently and is differently affected by it. Those who experience trauma also go through physical, psychological, and neurological changes. 

Studies have found that around 10% to 20% of the people who go through trauma develop PTSD. One of the main symptoms of diagnosing PTSD is how much the traumatic event is hampering your daily life. If it stops you from performing everyday activities, it is necessary to seek therapy and treatment for it.

What Are the Treatment Options for PTSD?

Let’s take a look at treatment options for PTSD in more detail;

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy or therapy is a treatment to help patients with PTSD cope with their trauma and eventually lead their normal lives. Therapy focuses on reducing anxiety and depression-related symptoms that are comorbid with PTSD as well as dealing with traumatic experiences. Here are two types of psychotherapy that work best for patients with PTSD.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy

This form of therapy focuses on the ability to come up with harmful thinking patterns as a result of the traumatic event. Most of the time, people who experience something traumatic in their lives end up developing a response to fear that is more than what generally people feel.

In prolonged exposure therapy, the therapist works with you to gradually come over those fears. The first step is to educate you about the symptoms of PTSD and the techniques to regulate emotions when you feel triggered.

Once you’ve learned those skills, the next step is to come up with a level of fear with your therapist. You will be exposed to the slightest of triggers and learn to cope with them. The triggers would increase in intensity once you’re capable of controlling and handling your fears at each stage.

This treatment will help you learn that what you faced is in the past and thoughts related to that traumatic event are not dangerous anymore. 

Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT focuses specifically on treating PTSD as this treatment focuses on the notion that people who go through trauma are not able to fully comprehend what happened to them.

This therapy takes around 12 sessions and is focused on identifying and restructuring unhealthy thought patterns that are stopping you from processing the trauma. For example, if you are blaming yourself for something that happened in the past, your therapist will help you realize that you weren’t at fault and it was something that was beyond your control. 

The therapist helps you understand the past by talking to you about it or asking you to write about your experience and how you relive it every day.

Neurological Therapies

Studies have found lasting effects of post-traumatic stress disorder on the nervous system and the brain. For that reason, neurological therapies have been effective in quite a few cases.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) – Tapping

The technique here is like acupressure, EFT tapping is a treatment to calm down and regulate emotions using massage that focuses on the points that are sensitive on your skin to gradually relieve stress and pain due to trauma.

This technique may help reduce the stress levels in your body after trauma and slowly make you feel better. This therapy is used with psychotherapy options.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR is a form of therapy; it main uses a series of eye movements to re-pattern thoughts related to the trauma experienced. Your therapist will choose one aspect of the memory you find extremely traumatic and help you remind yourself of something positive while you think about it.

Medication

With therapy treatments, medications such as antidepressants are also prescribed by psychiatrists to help cope with trauma in severe cases. However, these should only be taken in regular doses and after consulting a professional. Some medications include Zoloft and Prozac.

Wrapping It Up

Trauma can hamper our daily life functioning and cause several neurological, emotional, and psychological effects. If these symptoms last longer than a month, seeking professional help is necessary. The Sands Treatment Center has professional therapists to help you overcome trauma and deal with it effectively. Click here to contact them for their mental health services now!