Get Effective Support to Overcome PTSD at South Shores Recovery
For people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), daily life can be nerve-wracking. You may get startled easily, start to withdraw from your family and friends, and have a generally negative outlook on life. Some people even suffer from anxiety, depression, paranoia, or emotional outbursts.
Fortunately, with an effective, trauma-based PTSD treatment plan from South Shores, you can stop letting fear and anxiety rule your life. Below, you’ll find details about treatment options and an example of what one of our customized, holistic treatment plans could look like.
Seeking Treatment After a Traumatic Event
It’s normal to experience PTSD symptoms like negative thoughts, restlessness, anxiety, depression, flashbacks, nightmares, or even suicidal thoughts. They often begin between two days and four weeks after the traumatic event. This is called acute post traumatic stress disorder.
Typically, acute PTSD does not last longer than three months. When PTSD symptoms persist for six months or longer, it is considered chronic PTSD.
You can seek treatment any time after a traumatic event. Even in the early stages, you may benefit from medication to handle symptoms like anxiety or mood disruption. It can also be helpful to have support established if your symptoms do not fade with time.
Finding a Mental Health Professional You Trust
Often, a person’s trauma stems from one of the worst moments of their lives. You may feel vulnerable or exposed when you share details of the traumatic event, even when you share about your responses to trauma.
However, facing what happened is necessary to regain control of your life.
Having a good relationship with your therapist can make it easier to share these details. You’ll learn to trust them and the decisions they make regarding recommendations for therapy and coping strategies. This includes recommendations regarding treatment goals, suggestions for coping strategies, and deciding the best type of therapy for your specific needs.
You should also feel confident in the mental health professional you choose and comfortable with their abilities to treat you. Seeking out a Joint Commission-accredited treatment center like South Shores is a great place to start.
What to Expect During Intake
After reaching out to South Shores about PTSD treatment programs, one of our staff members will help you schedule an intake appointment. During intake, you’ll talk to one of our trauma specialists. They’ll ask questions about:
- Your most recent traumatic event. Expect to answer general questions about what happened to you. You may be asked how often you think about the traumatic event or how it impacts your daily life.
- Previous traumas or life experiences. Treating PTSD is trickier in clients who have previously experienced traumatic events because the event may trigger old traumas.
- Substance use. You’ll be asked qustions about drug and alcohol use, including frequency and the types of drugs. Don’t worry about getting in trouble. These questions are used to assess if you’d benefit from dual diagnosis care.
- Mental health. You’ll be assessed for mental illness including depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. You may also be asked questions about previous mental health treatment and diagnoses that pre-date the trauma.
- Emotional wellness. These types of questions assess your general emotional state. You may be asked questions about how often you feel sad, angry, or anxious, social habits, and self-care.
- General health. Some events involve physical injuries that can worsen PTSD symptoms. You’ll be asked questions about physical ailments and your general health history.
With your permission, we can also talk to your spouse or other family members. All the information gathered will be used to craft a personalized, trauma-oriented treatment plan.
Elements of PTSD Treatment Goals
Goals for treatment should reflect your trauma and symptoms. Common symptoms of PTSD include a poor sense of well-being, difficulty concentrating, fear and anxiety, strained relationships, and sleep problems. You might turn to substance abuse to feel detached or numb after what happened. Let’s look at some common areas to set treatment goals.
Gradual Exposure to Trauma
Gradual exposure to trauma through talk therapy and certain stimuli helps with symptoms like avoidance and fear responses. You’ll be exposed slowly, in manageable steps. As you set and meet goals, you’ll be able to celebrate and track your progress.
Emotional Regulation
Some people experience intense emotions after trauma, including anger, shame, or sadness. Negative emotions like these, as well as feeling emotionally numb, can take a toll on mental health.
Goals for emotional regulation include identifying triggers, establishing coping strategies and using them effectively, and healthily expressing yourself. You could talk to a therapist, lean on a trusted friend for emotional support, or even journal.
Symptom Management
These goals are focused on managing symptoms that disrupt daily life. PTSD symptoms are often worse when you’ve suffered physical or sexual assault, prolonged exposure to trauma, or had previous traumatic experiences.
For clients with nightmares and flashbacks, prolonged exposure therapy might be recommended to decrease frequency. Common symptom management goals include reducing anxiety and jumpiness, decreasing depression and increasing positive emotions, and improving sleep habits.
Boosting Confidence and Self-Esteem
The negative emotions experienced after a traumatic event can damage your confidence and self-esteem. Over time, you lose confidence in your ability to carry out day-to-day tasks, let alone face your traumas. Goals in this area may include recognizing and challenging negative thoughts about yourself, practicing self-compassion, and promoting self-esteem with positive activities and self-encouragement.
Improved Interpersonal Relationships
Your relationships with romantic partners, family, and friends may suffer after a traumatic event. Goals in this area might involve communicating your experience and the effects of PTSD on relationships, identifying relationship patterns, setting healthy boundaries, and learning to trust again.
A Sampling of Common PTSD Treatment Goals
Living with trauma can make it hard to remember what life felt like before it. Before you start treatment, you’ll work to establish specific treatment goals. These goals should reflect the symptoms and challenges you want to overcome through treatment.
Examples of PTSD treatment goals include:
- Rebuilding relationships after isolating from loved ones
- Overcome anxiety while driving after a car accident
- Being able to experience feelings about what happened without panicking
- Learning relaxation techniques for stressful situations
- Working with family or loved ones to develop a support system
- Feeling comfortable sharing trauma with your therapist and in support groups
- Developing healthy coping mechanisms for fear responses
- Handling the negative emotions associated with trauma in a healthy way
- Continuing with mental health treatment as needed
- Committing to a healthy sleep schedule and routine
- Participating in activities that you enjoy
- Developing healthy boundaries and relationships after prolonged physical or sexual abuse
- Working to process traumatic memories and take away their power
- Understanding triggers and how to overcome them
- Learning to communicate your needs with loved ones
- Establishing health support systems
These goals should be specific. Think about how trauma affects your everyday life and what you’d like to overcome.
Effective Therapies for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
Each person’s experience and response to a traumatic event is unique. Even two people who have lived through the same traumatic event may not develop the same PTSD symptoms, which is why there are several treatments called talk therapy that are recommended for treating posttraumatic stress disorder.
The type of trauma-focused talk therapy that will be most effective depends on your symptoms and treatment goals. Let’s take a closer look at different therapies and when they are most effective.
Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) invites clients to look at the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and reactions in a safe space. It helps identify negative or irrational thinking patterns common after a traumatic experience.
Once you identify these patterns, you can start to change them. Changing your thinking processes with cognitive therapy significantly reduces the symptoms of PTSD over time. The number of PTSD treatment sessions can vary, often between 8 and 25.
Cognitive Processing Therapy
This highly-structured therapeutic technique takes 12 sessions. It works best for people who are struggling with negative feelings associated with PTSD like shame, guilt, or depression.
As you identify unhelpful and irrational thinking patterns, you’ll be invited to challenge them. Over time, your negative thinking patterns will start to change.
Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy
Eye movement desensitization starts with using bilateral stimulation while you recall the memory. Typically, this bilateral stimulation is caused using eye movements. It reveals unprocessed trauma associated with the memory.
After the initial period of eye movement desensitization, similar stimulation will be used to change how trauma is stored in the brain. This eliminates problematic symptoms caused by unresolved traumatic memories.
Prolonged Exposure Therapy
Traumatic events can significantly impact the way that you react to certain thoughts, emotions, people, places, and situations. Exposure therapy uses visualization that exposes you to these stimuli in a safe and controlled environment. It helps desensitize traumatic memories and lets you learn coping skills in a comfortable environment.
Brief Eclectic Psychotherapy
This is a type of CBT for PTSD that combines elements of different therapies. It works best for people struggling with feelings of shame and guilt. It combines elements of direct psychotherapy with CBT.
Brief eclectic psychotherapy helps you understand your traumatic experience and realize that it was not your fault. This PTSD treatment typically lasts 16 sessions.
What Type of Therapy is Best for My Trauma?
Several factors affect which therapies will work best for your specific case of PTSD. Before recommending a course of treatment, your therapist will consider:
- The specific type of trauma and how long it lasted
- Existing mental health issues
- The severity of your symptoms
- Your thought patterns and feelings about the event
- Which symptoms you are experiencing
- Your goals regarding treatment
There is a lot that goes into crafting an effective, personalized treatment plan. This is why it’s so important to work with a therapist that you trust to recommend the best course of treatment.
Sample PTSD Treatment Plan
Something that sets South Shores apart from other mental health treatment centers is our holistic and trauma-focused approach to treatment. Each treatment plan is tailored to you and the areas where you need the most support.
We offer detailed, individualized PTSD treatments at all levels of care including inpatient programs, intensive outpatient programs, partial hospitalization programs, and other outpatient services. This is done using a total wellness approach to healing from trauma with these key components.
Structure and Routine
Establishing structure and routine can provide comfort when your life has been upset by a traumatic event. Having a routine can ease anxiety disorders because you know what to expect during the day. It can also be helpful to stay busy and try not to dwell on traumatic memories.
Furthermore, having a routine helps you establish healthy habits and get a good night’s sleep. All these things promote mental and emotional wellness.
Medication Support
Anti-anxiety meds, anti-depressants, and other medications are sometimes prescribed for symptom relief, though it is not a permanent solution for treating PTSD. Types of medication most commonly prescribed for clients struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) include:
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Paxil and Zoloft
- Other antidepressants including Amitriptyline or Effexor
- Anti-anxiety medications including benzodiazepines and alpha-1 blockers
- Medications to help with sleep including prazosin for nightmares
The best medication for PTSD depends on your symptoms. It is a short-term solution that works best when paired with a PTSD treatment program.
Trauma-Focused Therapy
During individual therapy, you’ll work with a trusted medical professional on developing and meeting certain goals. This might involve cognitive restructuring using one or more of the therapies mentioned above including cognitive processing therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy, brief eclectic psychotherapy, and exposure therapy.
Many of our PTSD clients also participate in group sessions as part of both our residential and outpatient PTSD treatment programs. Group therapy encourages you to share your struggles and challenges with people who understand. Support groups are also a useful tool for processing emotions, practicing coping mechanisms, and building social skills.
Healthy Habits
Healthy habits including proper nutrition, staying hydrated, practicing self-care, relaxing, and regular exercise play a crucial role in mental health disorders like post-traumatic stress disorder. Nutrition specifically benefits the gut biome and reduces PTSD symptoms according to this Harvard study.
Furthermore, when you are suffering after a traumatic event, it’s easy to neglect self-care and nutrition. This contributes to negative emotions, loss of self-esteem, and depressive states. As you begin caring for yourself again, it will significantly improve your mental health, emotional health, and general well-being.
PTSD and self-medication by clients is not uncommon, so addressing the root of the trauma can also help address any substance misuse.
Get Dual Diagnosis Support for PTSD and Substance Use
If you are struggling with substance use, you might meet someone to determine the extent of drug and alcohol use and whether you would benefit from a dual diagnosis program. This type of treatment is for co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.
Addiction often benefits from a similar holistic approach, including structure, physical activity, and hobbies, sticking to a routine, setting realistic goals, getting adequate sleep, and attending individual and group therapy. PTSD and alcohol abuse are the most common dual diagnoses that clients report to us at South Shores, though we have successfully treated many other forms of co-occurring disorders as well.
Get a Customized PTSD Treatment Plan at South Shores
You do not have to let avoidance, detachment, anxiety, and fear rule your life forever. When you reach out to South Shores, you are taking the first step toward gaining control of your life.
We use an individualized approach for each client that leads to better treatment outcomes for long-term recovery. As you begin to understand your thoughts and feelings regarding the event, you can also change them. And as you get comfortable through exposure therapy, your PTSD symptoms won’t be as overwhelming.
Call us to find out how we can help you today. All calls are confidential, so please reach out now for immediate support!
References
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004735/
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396183/
- https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-reprocessing
- https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/txessentials/overview_therapy.asp
- https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/researchers-discover-associations-among-ptsd-diet-and-the-gut-microbiome/