My Support Forums - View Single Post - How do you know if you need PTSD therapy?

Nammu · Jan 04, 2013, 06:23 PM

I wish I could give you an answer but I don't have one.

I know it did help somewhat to be in a group with others who were all PTSD/DID trauma survivors. There are pluses and minus though, for some it makes things worse because some of those people do want to be in treatment forever and they act out quite a lot and it can be very traumatizing and/or hard for others who want to care-take. On the plus side your story is understood, there is nobody else that can understand so well as other survivors and that validation can be really powerful. The group should be focused on healing tools to use for dealing with the PTSD symptoms if they are allowing people to act out w/o intervening with the tools you need a different group. The biggest problem is that there isn't many programs out there anymore.

You might try telling your T you really feel the need to either bump up your visits so that you can spend some time on obtaining the tools to use for these symptoms you talked about, and some of the time on the real life situations that need to be dealt with too. Or you might ask if she can't do that if she knows someone who you can see for the PTSD side of things, some people find rapid eye movement therapy very helpful. Those tend to be time limited sessions w/ a T or Pdoc who is trained in that therapy.

Some other tools you might want to look into are ways to center yourself, such as; Tactile-feeling where you are, Visual- looking around, Breathing methods. There are many ways to use Visualization- putting yourself in a safe place, or just picturing a calm happy place. There's many more, these are my grounding favorites. Everyone has their own tools that works best for them. You can try googling grounding techniques and see the many different tools for turning down the emotional output so you can function.

To many people I seem to have it all together now compared to before, but avoidance is still a huge issue for me. I'm fairly isolated and when big things happen in the world I don't watch TV or use the computer, I need to work past that. I have dealt with some of the issues that have given me the C-PTSD label but others are still there. My T wants me to go though a PTSD workbook with her(it was my grand idea at first! I bought the book to her, she hadn't seen that one and liked it very much.) but every time we've tried I have gotten too symptomatic. If I want to get out in the working world I need to face these things or I'm going to fail again. So maybe you can just bring up the idea of using a PTSD workbook with your T. There a few good ones out there. If you want the title of the one I have I'll give it to you but I recommend you use it with a T or Pdoc not on your own.