Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
If you’ve experienced a traumatic event and find that it continues to affect your daily life, you may be experiencing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. This could show up as flashbacks, nightmares, or intrusive memories, feeling on edge all the time, avoiding places or people that remind you of the trauma, or feeling numb and disconnected from the world. It’s common to feel like your mind and body are stuck in a state of high alert, even when you’re safe. If any of this sounds familiar, it doesn’t mean you’re “weak," it means your nervous system is responding to past trauma.
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When you go through something traumatic, it can affect the way your brain works. Your brain’s “alarm system” gets stuck in high alert, you feel jumpy or on edge all the time. The part of your brain that helps you think clearly and make decisions may have a harder time calming things down, and the part that stores memories can make the trauma feel very vivid or replay over and over. Basically, your brain is trying to keep you safe, but it can make you feel anxious, on guard, or overwhelmed even when you’re actually safe.
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How can therapy help you?
If we work together using Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) for PTSD, we’ll focus on helping you make sense of the trauma and how it’s affecting your thoughts and emotions. In our sessions, we’ll gently explore the ways the trauma may have shaped the way you see yourself, others, and the world. You’ll learn to identify and challenge unhelpful thoughts that keep fear, guilt, or shame alive, and practice new ways of thinking that help you feel safer and more in control.
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Cognitive Processing Therapy is a structured therapy that takes approximately10-12 weeks to complete. Most clients will experience improvement of their PTSD symptoms in this time frame. However, every client is different and no therapy is a one size fits all. We will work together to find what works best for you.