I'm going to stay away from the word "cure" and stick with the idea of "healing", a lot of which - in conjunction with what we do to help that along - is a natural process that we are all programmed/designed for.
I'd like to emphasis that PTSD is a group of symptoms, and you don't cure, heal or recover from symptoms. You cure, heal or recover from the cause of the symptom.
It's like having a wound on your arm that keeps bleeding. You can manage the bleeding. You can apply pressure, a tourniquet above it, a bandage, even medication that reduces the blood flow. But if you have an open wound, are you only going to focus on managing the bleeding? When you thought about healing, wouldn't you be thinking of the wound itself?
I think the issue is whether you can heal from trauma, or if you're going to spend the rest of your life dealing with the symptoms of not healing from it (ie PTSD). To me, healing means processing, and it seems from what I see on the forum that many people feell it can be processed only so much and you're stuck with the residue. I strongly disagree. My experience and belief is that we can process and heal the trauma, and therefore our PTSD symptoms will no longer occur. What processing means is covered in other threads here. I don't think it's limited to one or two types of therapy, or even having no therapy at all.
It's interesting to me that when people talk about the only things that have been shown to be "effective" for PTSD - like CBT, exposure therapy, EMDR - often that goes hand in hand with the belief that symptoms can only ever be managed. To me, that would imply that these approaches are perhaps not very effective. My personal view is that some amount of somatic therapy and imagery is needed. In the end, though, whatever therapies are thought to be effective, I think the benchmark for that has to be... 1. how effective and 2. effective with regard to what? Keeping symptoms subdued? This is particularly what I think about when I see stuff about a cure for PTSD, in other words a cure for symptoms. Isn't that phrase self-contradictory?
When it comes to healing from trauma, I have no queries. My view is, yes we can, by processing it. I don't mean endless exposure - there's a lot to consider about processing and how it works, and that has already been covered in other threads here.
Processing and healing from trauma is a whole different thing from "curing" or "healing" PTSD. Personally, I think it's important to stop the bleeding while you work on your arm, but stopping the bleeding is only temporary first aid. You don't plan to be stopping the bleeding for the rest of your life, or having it quieten down then suddenly, unexpectedly rear up again at any moment. You heal the wound.
