General Types of Therapy

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**This is a general guideline for informational purposes only and not meant for self-diagnosis or self-treatment plans. The only person who can best assess your condition is a medical doctor. Mood disorders can be life threatening and dangerous and you deserve the appropriate care to ensure your well being.**

Types of Treatments (taken from Help Guide's page on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)

Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy

Cognitive-behavioral therapy for PTSD and trauma involves carefully and gradually "exposing" yourself to thoughts, feelings, and situations that remind you of the trauma. Therapy also involves identifying upsetting thoughts about the traumatic event–particularly thoughts that are distorted and irrational—and replacing them with more balanced picture.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

EMDR incorporates elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy with eye movements or other forms of rhythmic, left-right stimulation, such as hand taps or sounds. Eye movements and other bilateral forms of stimulation are thought to work by "unfreezing" the brain's information processing system, which is interrupted in times of extreme stress, leaving only frozen emotional fragments which retain their original intensity. Once EMDR frees these fragments of the trauma, they can be integrated into a cohesive memory and processed.

Family therapy

Since PTSD affects both you and those close to you, family therapy can be especially productive. Family therapy can help your loved ones understand what you're going through. It can also help everyone in the family communicate better and work through relationship problems.

Medication

Medication is sometimes prescribed to people with PTSD to relieve secondary symptoms of depression or anxiety, but it does not treat the causes of PTSD.