- Admin
- #13
anthony
Founder
Without atleast some form of resolution to your trauma, then exposure therapy will still work as effectively, at the longevity will likely fail because you still have negative stigma attached to your trauma. This by itself will inflate your symptoms, even constantly recreate your triggers for you thus making exposure therapy more difficult for you to achieve. Instead of desensitising yourself to a trigger, your brain could be implementing it again nearly as fast. It all depends on your daily stressor intake. Exposure therapy is forcing yourself to your illness points in order to desensitise your brain. It works extremely effectively. It is progressive, not at once... you must accept you will make yourself ill, but you have to keep at it each time. This is why CBT is so effective with PTSD for longevity, because the majority of it beyond about 12 weeks of theoretical trauma therapy is the action stage, or exposure therapy. This is what takes 6 - 12 months, even 2 years to achieve. Even after this point, you still have to keep at it to ensure you maintain a level of desensitisation.
Avoidance is a coping strategy, always has been, always will be. Very little overall should be avoided as a strategy vs. targeted and wiped out with exposure therapy. I have one avoidance that no amount of exposure therapy could fix for me... and that was the living in a military town, where I was constantly exposed to soldiers, vehicles, helicopters flying on rooftops, etc etc. I did it, I tried it, and it failed. As soon as I removed myself from that location my symptoms began to drastically fall and stabilise, allowing even further decrease with more exposure therapy. Shopping centres and crowds was a huge one for me, which took a lot of concerts with 30,000+ type people and events, progressively started with going to shopping centre, then making my way into it, then slowly increasing my time inside, having regular breaks, coffee's, etc... and over the years of continually doing it I can go shopping all day now without panic or fear, without constantly watching what every person is doing around me... teaching myself to turn off and that I am not in a war zone, a hostile environment.
Everyone will have different triggers, but the same principle is applied. You have to make yourself ill in order to desensitise your brain to the problem. One at a time and as you go will find more and more will wipe themselves out as a consequence to you working on a major trigger.
Yes, this is why I state that people actually get to make a choice on how ill they constantly are with PTSD, because for the most part it is proven you can do x, y & z to decrease symptoms. Yes, you have to maintain a stress free lifestyle to keep things that way and you will still get periods of depression and such, but nothing to the extent you may be living with now. If you work, you have likely resigned yourself to the fact of being medicated in order to get you through the work week. That is normal for anyone who can work with PTSD.
All of this is here already... especially in the earlier posts of mine from years ago which anyone can find and read.
Avoidance is a coping strategy, always has been, always will be. Very little overall should be avoided as a strategy vs. targeted and wiped out with exposure therapy. I have one avoidance that no amount of exposure therapy could fix for me... and that was the living in a military town, where I was constantly exposed to soldiers, vehicles, helicopters flying on rooftops, etc etc. I did it, I tried it, and it failed. As soon as I removed myself from that location my symptoms began to drastically fall and stabilise, allowing even further decrease with more exposure therapy. Shopping centres and crowds was a huge one for me, which took a lot of concerts with 30,000+ type people and events, progressively started with going to shopping centre, then making my way into it, then slowly increasing my time inside, having regular breaks, coffee's, etc... and over the years of continually doing it I can go shopping all day now without panic or fear, without constantly watching what every person is doing around me... teaching myself to turn off and that I am not in a war zone, a hostile environment.
Everyone will have different triggers, but the same principle is applied. You have to make yourself ill in order to desensitise your brain to the problem. One at a time and as you go will find more and more will wipe themselves out as a consequence to you working on a major trigger.
Yes, this is why I state that people actually get to make a choice on how ill they constantly are with PTSD, because for the most part it is proven you can do x, y & z to decrease symptoms. Yes, you have to maintain a stress free lifestyle to keep things that way and you will still get periods of depression and such, but nothing to the extent you may be living with now. If you work, you have likely resigned yourself to the fact of being medicated in order to get you through the work week. That is normal for anyone who can work with PTSD.
All of this is here already... especially in the earlier posts of mine from years ago which anyone can find and read.
