Mate, sometimes EMDR and CBT won't work, especially if your mind is not calm enough. I wasted my therapist's time for a year or so by turning up stoned and just talking about what was on my mind.
Your mind has to be in a reasonably good place to work with your traumas, otherwise you can just shut down. Its a natural protective process.
My understanding is that its just an amplification of CBT. CBT is used to help you manage the actual thought process whereas CAT goes back further and tries to work out why your having these thoughts and where they stem from. They go right back to your childhood if necessary.
But you already know what nightmares keep you awake at night. They will just work out which ones are the main ones that are triggering all your symptoms. Then its a matter of exposure therapy on each of the traumas till your symptoms are reduced.
My main question with this is..... A veteran who has been in a combat zone has multiple traumas, sometimes many multiples of traumas. I don't understand how CAT can analyse what is causing your symptoms. That is why we are unique in a way. To help you understand, a person who has been in an auto wreck and witnessed death or almost died themselves is a single incident. A person who has lived through a Hurricane or Tornado where they have witnessed death or almost died themselves is a single incident. Just like a single fire and sometimes like a single incident of rape. I can understand CAT being used to diagnose what is the actual trauma.
However; a veteran can, like most of us here have a list of many multiples of life threatening situations just in one deployment, let alone 2 or more spread out over a multitude of years. I am not saying that rape or natural disaster victims don't exhibit symptoms of PTSD, I am just saying it would be easy to work with one incident of trauma, rather than many multiples like in the case of someone who was abused as a child, held captive, or been in combat.
Hope you understand what I am waffling about.
