Period.
If you’re serious about recovery then you’ve got to be working at it all the time until it no longer feels like work or your symptoms are under control. For PTSD, there are many options, including eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), somatic psychotherapies, cognitive behavior therapy (usually based on exposure principles), or mindfulness-based psychotherapies. For a review of these therapies and more, I’d recommend reading Healing from Trauma by Jasmin Lee Cori. She explains the options quite well.
I have elected to work with an individual therapist on sensorimotor processing therapy, take psychiatric medications, and attend an intensive outpatient program for 3 hours a night, 3 days after work. The group primarily focuses on dialectical behavior therapy skills, which are useful for all sorts of problems, not just borderline personality disorder – which they were originally designed to treat.
My goal, here, is not to talk about these types of therapies (I may do that in another post), but to talk about the shear amount of commitment needed for a true and lasting recovery. I am finding myself quite tired after being in therapies for 10-11 hours a week on top of my full time job. And yet, I know without the treatment, I will not be healing and progressing and so I take a deep breath on the car ride home and will my car to turn right instead of left when I get off my exit, knowing right leads to recovery and left, my home. Home will have to wait for me just a little longer tonight.
medicalptsd 