What treatment methods for PTSD have you/your t tried

I am curious what methods are out there. I am supposed to begin focused treatment in a few weeks and each time my t has tried to tell me about methods I have cut him off because I will fixate and find a way to tell myself how it wont work.

I do plan to work with whatever method he has in mind, I just don't want to panic myself yet. On the other side, I find myself wondering what possibilities are ahead. Kind of a 'as long as I don't know for sure' but 'I have some ideas', I think I can settle a bit.

It might not make any sense, but my brain is strange... LOL.

Sooo, what have you tried with your t, what was it like, how did you feel about it, was it helpful to you, whatever????

lt12345, I have PTSD. I have never really stuck to one particular method for very long, as my Ts have used a mixture of methods with me.

Meds did not help much, I've tried a number of them, mixed them, augmented them, blah blah. They just keep me from offing myself basically (sorry for being blunt). But don't help with PTSD really. Cognitive, behavioral, acceptance/commitment therapy helped somewhat, as did relaxation. But not that much.

Best method is exposure. Not just in words, but allowing yourself to experience the fear or anger or whatever in that situation. It has tons of research support, constantly comes on top as one of the best (if not the best) way to help PTSD. But there's a small problem in that my issue is not easily translatable into exposure situation.

Long story short,

So it's tough to recreate that situation, that would require an emergency of sorts and reliance on parents who may or may not be there for me. So part of my difficulties with this method has been about how to make a plan and do the graded exercises. When situations like the above, milder though, do happen, you'd think it's an opportunity to exercise but it's not. You have to be the one in control in the first place or else you just get retraumatized. You have to gain mastery of the situation, like slowly approaching a snake and many weeks later maybe even touch it and hold it for a dozen seconds. You can't decide to exercise this just when some snake will come up behind you when in the basement, right?! You have to control the exposure, and also important that you be able to repeat it till you master the situation. But to the extent I've been able to create that emotional situation in a controlled way, this method has helped greatly!

Hope this is been useful. Btw I think you might get better answers if you post in the PTSD section.

For me, we did life span integration and internal family systems. I was all split up before therapy.

Thank you Partles and PeeJay.

How long was your process? I have heard this stuff can range from 3 months to years.

PTSD too, in addition to perinatal brain injury sequelae.

The only kind of therapy that works for my PTSD is a combo of CBT + psychoanalysis + yoga.
CBT alone is not enough to help and psychoanalysis alone is not enough. I am too tense for yoga alone.

I need both the practical tools of CBT + the deeper understanding psychoanalysis gives me in order to help falshbacks, panic attacks etc... + yoga's help.
With these three techniques, I don't need any anxiety med.

Currently, the yoga teacher is absent because it's school holidays until Monday. Panic attacks and flashbacks came back in full force, so I reluctantly take PRN med as instructed by pdoc and GP (they both know I hate it, even when suffering is unbearable. Both are clear that preference for alternative methods is one thing, but it's excessive when I prefer unbearable suffering than PRN for fear of misuse. I recognize that their assertion is right, my fear of addiction is grossly out of proportion with the reality).

IME, there's nothing wrong with using tools you gain from different theoretical background.
If you feel you need more than one therapeutic technique to help you, it's absolutely ok and is irrelevant to your value.

I have PTSD also. I guess what has worked best for me has been a combination of therapies: CBT and psychodynamic-ish more or less.

My therapist never did "trauma" therapy (whatever that is), certainly not anything he called by that name. In fact, he was pretty careful about not using the technique of constantly going over and over the details of my trauma. He explained that used to be the believed method for working through trauma but that it has been found to in itself be retraumatizing to do so.

Instead, he was always very focused on only working through past traumas as they were tied to whatever I was dealing with in my present. By doing so, it gave context to looking at the past and a very specific reason for doing so. It also kept those exposures limited in nature to small doses as needed as opposed to constantly going in and flooding me with trauma memories week after week just for the sake of looking at memories. It was safer that way for me. It probably took longer, but the results have been very good in the long run.

I don't think there is any one best way for dealing with PTSD. So much depends on the cause of your trauma, the types of symptoms you personally have to deal with, the severity of those symptoms, etc. I do know those symptoms can be greatly relieved over time. My PTSD symptoms used to seriously dominate my life, but I'd say they have reduced now to where when I do experience symptoms they kind of surprise me because it is rarely an issue for me anymore. It did take me a very long time to reach that point though; many years of therapy and lots of patience with myself.

I'm two years in and I'm pretty ok. The first year was mostly me testing my therapist and turning off the denial of being traumatized to begin with. I can see myself being in therapy for five years, easily, but I could have quit at two years and been ok.

I had PTSD and My ex therapist used existential methods:

"Existential psychotherapy is a style of therapy that places emphasis on the human condition as a whole. Existential psychotherapy uses a positive approach that applauds human capacities and aspirations while simultaneously acknowledging human limitations. Existential psychotherapy shares many similarities with humanistic psychology, experiential psychotherapy, depth psychotherapy, and relational psychotherapy."

It worked!

I am with a psychologist now that is an Esitantialist. I have only had 3 sessions with him and am confussed as what we do in session. For two years I have done EMDR and Internal Family systems so I new what we would be doing or focusing on and the point. I am alive even though I was suicidal on a day to day basis. I honestly think it was the doatting of my therapist, kind of reparenting me, that actually caused a change. I no longer meet all the criterias any longer for BPD and my PTSD symptoms have calmed down. I still have lots of trouble and certain life stressors cause me to regress.

Thank you all for your input. My t said there are really only 4 methods typically used and I told him to decide what he thinks would be best based on knowing me. I trust him to pick and change if necessary, I am just getting more and more curious as the 2 week mark approaches : - !

Yes, for me, years. My problem was bad because I was regressing, I was surrounded with people and was constantly in a situation (because of my sister's up and down mental health issues) that kept triggering me.

It was not until I was able to extract myself from that environment and my sister was luckily stabilized, that I was able to actually focus myself and get strong enough to try to expose myself to similar situations without overwhelming fear.

PTSD has a way of completely messing up your sense of time and place. It's almost existential. After PTSD you don't live life as if you could live forever, you live as if ever day could be the last one, as if there is no guarantees in life anymore, nothing to hold on to.

This break can go so deep, that now I remember, we also tried some narrative therapy (which to also help my depression) to give my life some meaning. Looking at the replies about existentialism, I'm also reminded that I personally tried to read philosophy and see if I could make sense of this experience. I also tried to see if I could regain my religious faith, which had helped me live through sometimes chaotic and frightening world of my youth. Why you trust there is an ultimate "why" in life, you stop searching for it in immediate life and are not frustrated when things happen that make no sense.

Sadly all of these efforts seemed not enough, or disappointing. I could not be religious like before (though I'm still spiritual in a general sense), also reading philosophy just depressed me more, and I was like someone whose soul had been extracted and fragmented, and I kept putting it back in, in new arrangements, with new adhesives, but it never felt right. I was still stuck in the past, with uncertain future, etc.

On a personal level - and you might think this is odd thing to say - what has helped me most has been to actually be around people and observe what they do. Share and let them share with me. When your body and mind and emotions are just full of wounds and traumas and fragmentation, there is a loneliness that goes so deep is defies description. PTSD does that you. Then you distance yourself to be safe, but it makes life worse. Can't be a long term strategy.

To counter that loneliness of PTSD that had changed the direction of my life and made me feel worlds apart from "normal" people- and this has been hard - I've tried to very slowly be more and more around people and listen to them. This recreates that sense of normalcy for me. Sense of being human, around humans, with shared fears and hopes and dreams, there is something unusually comforting in shared suffering and fragility of life. This sense that people are my extended family, even if we don't know each other. When I hear them, I'm reminded of similar things inside me, ones I had blocked since PTSD, and the more of them come alive, the more normal I feel.

I hope your PTSD is not as bad (that gets better way faster, and you need to try fewer different methods), but just to tell you there's hope, even with worst of them.

schema and psychodynamic therapy.... some mindfulness and cbt.....

You all rock!! Thanks so much.

I don't know how all of these therapies work. I looked a couple up but with what you did, did you focus on today or did you have to go back and talk about past stuff like the exposure one. My issues start from repeated childhood problems and I wonder how that would work if there isn't ONE huge thing to deal with like I have read about on the exposure one.

in my therapy we do not do exposure...we dont want me to get overwhelmed. we go at it in little bits ..then take breaks. i think it works best that way for me. we talk about day to day stuff and also about how it might relate to my past. like as in if i reacted a certain way to a situation in the present, why i might be reacting that way and what it reminds me of. my T has never told me i have to recount my story and process every minute detail....im not sure if i would ever be fully prepared to even do that. i do agree though that there is something inside of me that does want to talk about specific things and about how much they still affect me to this day. doing that is hard because it can destabilize me, so like i said, we do it in increments.

junkDNA, that's me to. It seems so strange because I am over 40 and have never even admitted to stuff really until this t. Part of me is TERRIFIED of what is coming ahead because I am well aware that I removed emotions long long ago and that is the main thing he keeps talking about starting with. Then there is another part of me in there somewhere that wants to tell so bad. Like maybe if he makes me tell him it will get better. (I know it isn't a t's job to 'make' anything, but I am not allowed in myself to just 'tell'..... if that makes any sense).

I am massively conflicted with it all coming up. Just as terrified as I am at the thought of 'feeling' and how bad it might be,,,, I am equally hoping it will be horrible. It's like part of me wants things better and the other part wants everything to hurt miserably.

Geeeee,,,,, I might need to seek counseling or something. I think I might have a problem

But are you sure then all that's related to PTSD? They can be regular anxieties, depression, etc, that been piled on top of each other. PTSD usually has more clear onset and causes, like a particular incident or situation. There is also c-PTSD but that's more controversial and usually more tied in with alternative conceptualization of BPD.

yes, he is sure of PTSD but has said he is still in question as to whether it is complex ptsd or not.

Okay then, so now it might first involve some detective work to get to root of the PTSD (or c-PTSD) cause(s) and then on to find ways to deal with them. As was with my case, much easier to treat it once you can figure out what caused it. Otherwise you just have to test a lot of possibilities and just note your reaction.

The approach to dealing with PTSD would probably be a bit different depending on whether you are working with complex trauma (repeated abuse, etc. that was on-going) or a specific trauma event. C-PTSD tends to come with issues of attachment/abandonment, etc., while PTSD from specific trauma may present differently and involved other issues. That may direct the type of therapy that is more effective.

im pretty sure i have CPTSD. i dont talk about diagnoses a lot with my T...and i hate my nurse practitioner, anndddd CPTSD isnt a diagnosis in the new dSm. but yeah, my trauma was complex and chronic and multiple events

Thanks again for the insight everyone. Each day closer to my start day the more I am struggling with wanting to know the plans and NOT wanting to know. Having some ideas of what 'might' be the plan does help.

All weekend I keep thinking about how terrifying it is going to be to 'open' the emotions. I am sooooo scared I will freak out and frustrate my t and he will feel overwhelmed and back off. I DO want to do this and have a chance at getting better but I am scared I might be to much for him and in the end, he will leave and I have opened the box making it so much worse. If I tell him this, he slows down though because he doesn't want to trigger me. I do understand the reasons for each way, but I am still so uncertain about the next few months of my life.

Thanks for the help and ideas you all are providing.

Cranial Sacral massage was the only thing that helped me with ptsd.

REALLY!!!!! I have an amazing chiropractor I have known for years and he does cranial sacral technique in his practice. I wonder if he might be able to help also then.

Thanks stopdog, I will look into that