1. Manage PTSD With Cognitive-Behavior Therapy
If you have PTSD, you can undergo cognitive-behavior therapy to help you understand the specific stresses that trigger your symptoms and work to overcome them. This behavioral-intervention technique helps you to address your trauma, using tools like journals and diaries to record thoughts, feelings and impressions.
You might also take part in a discussion forum, in the form of group or individual therapy. During therapy, you'll be encouraged to talk openly about feelings you have that may or may not be directly associated with the trauma. The therapist will then use what you said to illustrate behavioral patterns caused by PTSD in an effort to help you design strategies to overcome them.
Over time, you'll learn to control and modify your PTSD induced psychological and emotional reactions. Cognitive-behavior therapy is usually used in conjunction with prescription medications and other forms of psychotherapy, providing symptom control.
2. Use Exposure Therapy
If you have specific triggers that induce sharp, disturbing memories of the traumatic event, you might be introduced to exposure therapy to help control your flashbacks. This technique will gradually expose your triggers, and their psychological effects should diminish. For example, a person who was attacked by an intruder may be triggered by the sound of glass breaking or a window sliding open. In that case, the therapist would expose the patient to these sounds until the psychological mechanism that associates these sounds specifically with the traumatic event is broken.
3. Consider Implosive Therapy
Implosive therapy is a more aggressive form of exposure therapy and is usually reserved for extreme cases. It relies upon unexpectedly exposing the patient to triggers. Though this can be stressful and frightening at first, it can be remarkably effective in a relatively short period. As with cognitive-behavior therapy and exposure therapy, it is most often used with medications and other psychoanalytic techniques as part of an individually designed treatment regimen.
