Traumatic Stress Studies Division

Evaluation and Treatment

Psychotherapy Treatment

Psychotherapy comes in many forms. One of the most basic and universally helpful is education as to what are common reactions to trauma. Education can help destigmatize an individual’s reaction and decrease fears that he/she is "going crazy" or having an "inappropriate" or "bad" response.

Specific therapies have been developed and proven to be effective for the treatment of trauma survivors. For those individuals experiencing symptoms related to their trauma experience, the general approaches of exposure therapy and cognitive therapy can be very beneficial.

Exposure Therapy

Exposure therapy involves integrating one’s emotional response to the trauma with the verbal description of what happened. This allows the trauma eventually to be "put in its proper place" so it can become past history, rather then something that is constantly present and haunting the individual. Relaxation exercises and exercises to control the stress response, in addition to gradually introducing the individual back to places and things that he/she may be avoiding, all facilitate the recovery process.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy addresses the tendency of trauma survivors to develop distorted ideas about themselves or the world following a traumatic event. Some of the more common distorted thoughts that trauma survivors may report include:

I’m a bad person for feeling glad that I survived, since so-and-so didn’t survive.
The world is so dangerous that I shouldn’t even leave my house.
It’s my fault I got raped.

Supportive Therapy

Supportive therapy helps the individual with his/her natural tendency to want to process mentally what happened to them. The therapist, as an objective and stable individual, can hear the survivor’s story, help him/her explore important questions he/she may have, and encourage constructive ways of thinking and behaving. Family members, because of their intense emotional involvement with the individual, may certainly care to help, but their interaction with the survivor may be biased or the survivor may not feel comfortable talking about certain issues.