PTSD Treatment

How do you know if you need PTSD treatment? When you think of trauma, you often think of major events such as wars or near death experiences which cripple you functioning, and create a legacy of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). However we now know that PTSD can come about from far less severe traumatic experience or ongoing exposure to unsafe or adverse environments of dynamics with other people.

In our Perth based practice, our mental health professional therapy approach is to “turn off the switch” that is jammed that keeps you no longer feeling safe in the world. The treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder must take you back to a place of the original state of feeling safe again. As our therapists have a very good understanding of how PTSD manifests in your body and mind, we can help resolve simple and complex trauma using both counselling and psychotherapy to help patients struggling with this condition with there overall mental health.

What Is PTSD

Posttraumatic stress disorder is characterised as being present where a traumatic event is re-experienced persistently in at least one of the following ways:

• Recurrent and intrusive memory, including fantasizing or re-enactment of the event(s)
• Recurrent distressing dreams of the event(s)
• Sudden gestures, flashbacks or feelings as though the event(s) are happening again
• Intense psychological distress at exposure to events that symbolize or “seems like – feels like” some part of the traumatic original event(s)

Symptoms Of PTSD – Why you should get Treatment

When living through a traumatic event people with PTSD manifests symptoms in both the body and mind with symptoms which may include:

• Disrupted nervous system that is easily aroused
• Feeling unsafe
• Hyper-vigilance which constantly scans for danger and the original threat
• Recurrences of that thing which originally created the PTSD in the first place
• Emotionally reactive
• Rapid eye movements
• Anxious
• Depressed
• Obsessive
• Splits-off or dissociates by leaving your body when startled
• Distorts reality and hallucinates with old images inserted into current reality
• Black and white rigid thinking
• Feeling collapse or chaotic
• Starts but does not finish projects and tasks
• Suspicious
• Withdrawn or isolated
• Reliving traumatic memories or traumatic events
  
• Fears socialising or being in crowds or around noise or stimulation
• Numb to physical bodily sensations and feelings

Treatment For Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Talk therapy including cognitive processing therapy is effective as an educational tool but is limited in dealing with PTSD it can help improve your overall mental health.

At Energetics Institute in Perth, some of our body mind therapists are specifically trained in Sensorimotor Trauma Psychotherapy (behavioral therapy & cognitive therapy) which treats trauma by reprogramming the PTSD sustaining Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) part of the brain.  This approach utilises the body as a key means of having the trauma sufferer develop awareness of their internal sensations and physical action patterns which is very effective in treating ptsd.

Treatment of PTSD is a bodymind issue that needs to be treated with an approach that pays attention to the present time experience and interpretation of physical sensations and the prior experience, pre-programmed physical action patterns, and also physical movement and breath strategies for trauma recovery.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder treatment creates a safe environment for healing to occur.  Our treatment may involve, breathwork, neuroscience, attachment theory, bodywork and working with the sensorimotor processes of the trauma sufferer.  Work may be needed on boundary violations, abandonment, trust issues, loss of self-regulation, and formation of victim belief systems. If you or a loved one is suffering with this condition please feel free to reach out to us at the Energetics Institute.

Check out our our Trauma Counselling page which explains the origins of PTSD.

Upcoming Workshop on PTSD