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Healthinmind/Mental Health Disorders/Anxiety Disorders/PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) is the name for a group of symptoms
that often follow violent, frightening or life threatening experiences.
Many PTSD sufferers continue to experience flashbacks, depression,
nightmares, substance abuse and other symptoms for years following the
original trauma. PTSD is very difficult to treat effectively with
traditional psychotherapy. However,
a number of nontraditional techniques developed over the last few years
offer rapid, effective and long-lasting relief from PTSD symptoms.
Eye
Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is the best-known of
these methods. During EMDR
the client thinks of the traumatic event, while the therapist provides
right-left visual, touch, and hearing stimulation. The client watches the therapist move his or her fingers or a wand
rapidly back and forth. The
therapist may also alternate physical taps and sounds while the client is
imagining the trauma. For
reasons we do not entirely understand, EMDR usually relieves the PTSD
symptoms in only a few sessions. Perhaps
the most unusual technique and the most difficult to explain is Thought
Field Therapy (TFT). TFT, however, is gaining popularity quickly as a
treatment for PTSD and other disturbing psychological symptoms. It is useful for a larger number of problems than EMDR,
including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety. The technique is based on the idea that our body’s energy runs
along meridians that can be blocked by psychological or physical
disturbances. The energy can be released by tapping on the areas where the
blockage occurs. The
developer of this technique based it on the principles of acupressure and
acupuncture and adapted these for psychological use. In TFT the therapist
asks the client to focus on the traumatic event (if the problem is PTSD)
and then the therapist instructs the client to follow a prescribed series
of taps, eye rolls, counting, humming. One of the appealing things about TFT is that the client does not
have to talk about the trauma for the treatment to be effective. Another new treatment is called
Visual Kinesthetic Dissociation (VKD; it is based on the principles of
Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). VKD practitioners take clients through a step-by-step program
of purposeful dissociation from the trauma. The intent is for clients to
be able to distance themselves from feeling overwhelmed by the memories. This technique uses a combination of “talk therapy,"
grounding techniques (squeezing the therapist’s hand, holding onto a
chair) while being asked to view the trauma as if it were a movie. Then
the client is asked to view the movie backwards very quickly. Other types
of dissociative techniques are added to enable the client finally to be
able to experience himself/herself as separate from the event. This technique also requires little or no discussion of the
incident that provoked the PTSD. Traumatic Incident Reduction
(TIR) is
a non-traditional technique that sounds more like traditional talk
therapy. Its founders,
however, argue that it is not therapy at all, but education. The
premise is that, if people are guided back through the traumatic event or
events and allowed to witness them without talking, and then describe what
they saw, and how the incident seems to them, over and over 5-10-20 times,
the client will arrive at his own healing point. TIR practitioners
say that the client will acquire a different perspective on the impact and
meaning of the whole incident, and that the PTSD symptoms will be
diminished. Behavior therapists would point out that all of these non-traditional approaches, at least when they are applied to the treatment of PTSD, are consistent with the principles of classical conditioning. In every case the conditioned stimulus (thoughts of the event that caused the PTSD) is repeatedly presented in a secure context that minimizes fear. In EMDR, TFT, and VKR the client must attend to stimuli that interfere with fear responses and probably hasten the disconnection of the fear stimulus from the fear response. In TIR the disconnection might be less rapid because there are fewer external stimuli that interfere with the fear response. If
you would like to visit the web site of a therapist in southern California
who is licensed to provide these therapies, click
here.
Last updated 12/19/03 |
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