Our Cognitive Processing Therapy Worksheets

Expert Guidance on Using CPT for PTSD and Trauma Treatment

Are you looking for new ways to reinforce your PTSD treatment sessions at home? Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD is a highly effective method of helping participants manage “stuck points” that mean they hold them back from resolving trauma.

Our Cognitive Processing Therapy worksheets are a good supplement that will help you practice your new skills between each session.

South Shores Detox, a Joint Commission-accredited treatment center based in Dana Point, California, helps clients with various mental health concerns. We’ve helped numerous clients overcome PTSD and the co-occurring diagnoses that often accompany it – substance use disorder, panic or anxiety disorder, in particular.

Please join us to learn more about CPT and to download our cognitive processing therapy worksheets.

What is Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)

CPT is a specific cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) subset with the specific purpose of helping patients with PTSD and other trauma-borne disorders.

Cognitive processing therapy helps people who have PTSD and trauma identify and change “stuck points.” Some clinicians use it as a primary treatment method. However, others often use it if other treatments have not released the unhelpful beliefs that accompany the trauma.

What Are Stuck Points?

“Stuck points” are negative beliefs that have taken a firm hold on the client’s mind because of a traumatic event.

These thoughts are highly resistant to change, requiring specially-trained clinicians’ help. The negative thinking can be about participants themselves or about other people or situations. CPT is a vital component of a proper PTSD treatment plan, and can be quite effective in overcoming such thinking.

Thought Patterns Targeted by Cognitive Processing Therapy Treatment

Here are the primary thought patterns and language that reveal stuck points to therapists:

• Self-blame: Patients in this category often repeatedly lay the blame for the traumatic even at their own fee. They say things such as: “I should have done something to prevent it.”
• Poor self-image: These participants feel so poorly after trauma that they believe they’ll never be the same again. Phrases they may say include: “I’m forever flawed after [insert traumatic event.]”
• Distrustful of other people: Clients with these stuck points believe that they can only trust themselves and become closed off to others. Common language includes: “People will always let you down; never trust them!”
• General pessimism: Unresolved trauma often causes CPT clients to have a generally unfavorable or pessimistic view of the entire world. They see everything as unsafe or unfair, sometimes feeling a sense of doom. They may say things like: “The world is a dangerous place to live; bad things happen every day.”

Using CPT can help clients challenge these thoughts and, over time, dismiss them.

Is Cognitive Processing Therapy for PTSD Safe and Effective?

A meta-analysis reviewed 11 studies with 1130 patients to look into the efficacy of CPT in adults with PTSD. They found CPT was highly effective and surpassed many other active therapies immediately after treatment. The finding confirm that CPT is both effective and provide sustained benefits.

What Is a CPT Session Like?

While most are familiar with CBT, more clients haven’t heard of CPT and may wonder what to expect at a session.

The therapy uses 12 sessions. In each session, patients learn to identify the stuck points and learn how to challenge or disprove them. The clients develop a more realistic point-of-view about the traumatic event and learn how to live with the outcomes of trauma.

During each session, therapists guide participants through a practice that includes completing worksheets or a CPT book with other exercises.

The 12 CPT Sessions

Here is a general overview of each CPT session. This list does not provide great detail, as each client has highly personalized needs; however, it should give you a good idea of what to expect.

CPT Week-by-Week

Here’s a closer look at the weekly expectations of CPT:

• Week 1 Introduction to CPT: Clients learn more about PTSD and the therapy process. This first session sets the expectations for the remaining weeks.
• Week 2 Identifying Stuck Points: Therapists lead clients in identifying their own stuck points, often using worksheets to process their internalized thoughts.
• Week 3 Challenging Stuck Points: Therapists guide the client using worksheets to challenge and change stuck points.
• Week 4 Writing an Impact Statement: Participants practice writing a statement explaining how their trauma has changed their views and negative thoughts about others.
• Week 5 Processing the Traumatic Memory: The therapist helps the client elaborate on the impact statement and then write a trauma narrative, allowing the client to see the trauma from the viewpoint of a storyteller instead of a trauma victim. This exercise gives them a feeling of greater control.
• Weeks 6, 7, and 8 Continually Challenging Stuck Points: Each session continues to challenge stuck points using different worksheets and methods.
• Week 9 Revisiting the Impact Statement: The therapist helps the client review week 4’s impact statement and compares current thoughts and how they’ve changed during the past few weeks.
• Weeks 10-11 Addressing Remaining Issues: Therapists look at any specific stuck points that may remain. They use specific CPT worksheets to continue chipping away at those beliefs.
• Week 12 Consolidate and More Forward: The therapist and client will tally up and consolidate all the client’s gains in therapy. They’ll also develop an aftercare plan for after therapy ends.

No therapy can “undo” the cause of the trauma. But targeted interventions can make the client feel more peaceful after the event.

Mental Health Disorders That Come From Trauma

Besides PTSD, unresolved trauma may cause a host of additional mental health disorders in adults:

• Acute stress disorder
• Adjustment disorders
• Dissociative disorders
• Anxiety disorders
• Depression
• Substance use disorders
• Personality disorders

Early treatment after a traumatic event can help prevent these other outcomes, usually in an outpatient setting.

Download Our CPT Manual

Here are several pages that are representative of the CPT worksheets you will use under the guidance of a therapist. These are not intended to replace therapy but to give you some tools to help you supplement therapy sessions or prepare to meet with a therapist.

Also, these do not intend to serve as a formal diagnosis. Only meeting with a licensed clinician can confirm your diagnosis.

Get Trauma Help at South Shores Recovery

If you or your loved one faces a daily battle with trauma, it’s time to find help. Please consider South Shores Recovery in Dana Point. We provide safe, evidence-based therapies that will target the negative feelings that come from trauma and find peace again.

You also don’t need to worry about working out the details of your insurance coverage when you choose us for treatment. We work with many private and group insurance companies to make treatment more affordable.

Our admissions team offers specialized knowledge of insurance plans, including coordinating TRICARE benefits for military members. All you must do is call our team and give them your contact information and the information from your insurance care. They’ll get all the approvals you need from the insurer and call you back.

Call us today. It’s time to start healing the pain of PTSD.