Psychotherapy is the most highly recommended approach for treating issues related to tragedy, trauma and loss. Psychotherapy is often called “talk therapy.” This can occur in individual sessions or in a group. There are many approaches that are used in psychotherapy. A common approach would be to have patients get educated about the symptoms, learning to identify the triggers to the symptoms, and skills to manage the symptoms.
Talk therapy helps people overcome PTSD by teaching them how to react to the event that triggers their symptoms.
They may also help by:
• Using relaxation and anger management skills.
• Provide tips for improved sleep, diet, and exercise.
• Teach the patient about trauma and its effects.
• Help people identify and deal with guilt, shame and other emotions connected to the event.
• Will help people focus on changing how they react to their PTSD symptoms.
The names of the styles of psychotherapy which are commonly used to treat PTSD are, CBT or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This approach incorporates helping people face their fears and control their response to them. This can be done by visualizing, or writing about the place, or actually visiting the place where the trauma occurred.
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a Cognitive/Behavioral Technique which is highly successful in treating the emotional wounds from tragedy, trauma and loss. This technique has to be done by a trained practitioner and involves a certain number of sessions reviewing in great detail the actual event. The purpose is to desensitize the actual event so that the symptoms actually disappear.
Remember that PTSD is different from Grief. Everyone grieves a loss differently. The important thing is to complete the grieving process in order to heal and have a productive life. There are Grief Groups everywhere, and a great deal of information on line. Don’t make any major life decisions while grieving a loss. Eat well, sleep as much as you can, and exercise if you can. Journal your thoughts and your feelings about the loss. Carefully look at your quality of life and see if you need professional help to complete your grieving process.
Your Trauma Recovery Toolbox
As you have read, you have seen that there are many approaches to recovering from the emotional trauma of experiencing a loss or tragedy. If you are successfully able to deal with it yourself, have your toolbox ready to choose the techniques and approaches to aid you in your recovery and healing.
• Notice what you are feeling. Don’t ignore your feelings. Validate them as they are the messengers from your body signaling what is really going on inside you.
• Engage in self-talk about these feelings. They are real and can’t be ignored. If you are fearful discuss the fear with yourself, privately, and seek a solution to the fear.
• Journal your emotions. Just let your feelings be expressed on paper freely with no filters. Your journal should be private.
• Notice your body relaxing if you have really expressed the feelings.
• Breathe through any remaining feelings. Notice when you are not breathing (stress and anxiety) and stop what you are doing and breathe. Finding that when you are holding your breathe means that there are some feelings that need to be noticed and expressed.
• Notice if you are feeling uncomfortable emotionally. Is there is a thought or situation that triggered this discomfort?
• Are you having flashbacks? Then you haven’t really released the trauma yet. Do you have to forgive yourself, or someone else? Are you ready to do the work to forgive?
• Journal out some forgiveness statements. See if your breathing is easier. Only when you think of the trauma and your breathing is normal, then you will know that you are making progress towards healing.
• Exercise.
• Meditate.
• Journal.
• Breathe.
• Do self-talk.
• Do some of the EMDR exercises at the end of this book that are found in YouTube videos.
• Reach out to others for support.
• Don’t isolate.
• Join a support group.
• Read about the successes others have had dealing with trauma and loss.
• If you are religious or spiritual, seek a religious or spiritual support system.
• Eat good food.
• Be with people who are not toxic.
• If you still have waves of emotion that surprise you now and then, having to do with the trauma, and you have been using the above tools, then it is time to seek a professional. Find a professional that specializes in dealing with trauma reduction. The most researched cognitive/behavioral approach in dealing with healing trauma is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). Find a therapist who is trained in EMDR. You should be able to think about the incident, tragedy, trauma, or loss without it immobilizing you. EMDR will help you achieve that goal.