PTSD Professional Perspective: PTSD Group Therapy, A View from the Inside
Sunday, November 1st, 2009 • PTSD Guest Post: Professional Perspective •
Jessica Woolfolk is a therapist willing to learn and eager to help those wanting to heal. Her blog, Beyond the Rx: Everyday Psych & Mental Health, is a thoughtful and inspiring collection of posts geared to demystify topics and offer helpful tips and advice.
I’m very excited for her to guest post since she believes, as I so fervently do, that everyone can heal from trauma. Today, she turns her creativity to the PTSD question as she writes about…
Educating Others to Help Themselves
Everyone experiences traumatic events in their lives; this is inevitable. Whether it is an accident, injury, rape, abuse, loss of a loved one or military trauma, we will all face it. The difference between all of us is how we handle these traumatic experiences. For some who are resilient, the result is power, strength and hope. Unfortunately, that is not the outcome for all. Some do not have the coping skills to bounce back from trauma.
As a therapist in a community mental health center partial hospitalization program, I have encountered several clients who have shared their most traumatizing life events. My supervisor, a cognitive behavioral therapist, runs a trauma group biweekly, for those clients who wish to face their trauma and progress in the healing process. I however, wanted to educate the other clients about trauma, and more specifically, about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I began my group like any other, asking my clients what they knew about PTSD and trauma in general. After discussing causes, symptoms and warning signs, a few of my clients began the self diagnosis process (probably not a good thing!). Our discussion led to some of the clients opening up about specific traumatic events in their lives that have not lead to a diagnosis of PTSD, but still the memory haunts them. I reassured the clients that the group discussion did not have to take this specific route, as I had intended only for it to be psycho-educational. However, my clients continued revealing their most personal stories. This is what I believe is step one in recovery: the ability to share one’s experiences with others rather than keeping it inside. It is cathartic and starts one on the right road to recovery.
Most of the clients, both men and women, had experienced some variation of sexual abuse, either in childhood or adulthood. One woman was sexually abused by her older brother for several years. Another was sexually abused by her husband. Fortunately for these two women, they are survivors, but they still have to live with a horrible memory of their family members and the pain they inflicted on them.
The discussion mainly focused on how trauma plays a role in future relationships. For most, trust, guilt and loss are involved in life and relationships after trauma. It is difficult for a woman to be intimate with a man after she was abused by another man for so long. This is probably what I feel is one of the worst parts of trauma – the inability to function, love and trust as one was once conditioned to. It seems as though their entire being is swept away by one powerful force and it can take nearly a lifetime to rebuild the ability to function and love again.
While I have not experienced anything even half as traumatic as some of my clients, I have heard more horror stories than I would like to admit. I have seen pain in their eyes, and with some, a renewed sense of hope after years of healing a broken heart and mending wounds. While it does take many a very long time to heal, I do believe everyone has the capability to recover after a traumatizing effect, no matter how intense. I believe all humans have this power; the ability to heal, overcome and persist. Trauma is a test that everyone can overcome in their own way, with time, support and the trust in recovery.
Jessica Woolfolk is a fulltime mental health therapist in a community mental health agency partial hospitalization program. She has a B.A. in Psychology and is very interested in learning about people and mental illness. She always love helping people, leading them down the right path. You can follow her on Twitter @JessicaLWI.
Tags: causes, educating, Jessica Woolfolk, post traumatic stress disorder, ptsd, relationships, survivors, symptoms, trauma
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Honestly I am a little disappointed! You said after an explanation of causes symptoms and warning signs the people started a process of self diagnostics and you followed it with (probably not a good thing.) Believing that healing comes primarily from within, how is it not a good thing for them to start looking within themselves for possible symptoms and warning signs? Are you saying that an outside source has the ability to change what is occurring inside a person? Or knows better than a particular person what is really going on inside them? If that were the case PTSD would have never become an issue. I have been to the group therapy and it boils down to a complaint session after the initial introduction. Traditional talk therapy leads almost nowhere and I see very little use in group therapy as a means to treat PTSD. I think maybe it is an effective way to educate multiple people in an efficient manner. I have observed the group therapy among some hardcore combat related cases of PTSD and we all as a group conclude that it is little more than an opportunity to vent. This is old school of thought, which is primarily what the VA uses as treatment. One of my major complaints about traditional therapy is the narcissism that exists among those who call themselves PTSD experts. Glad you have the desire to help, but this is not ground breaking news.