Prolonged Exposure and Emotional Processing for PTSD

Jun 20, 2017
1 min read

Best treatment practices for childhood-originating PTSD is based on the tenets of emotional processing theory. Prolonged exposure is an evidence-based treatment for PTSD. This does not mean exposure to persons who are the source of PTSD, but exposure to stimuli that PTSD clients avoid. They are the cues to distress. It could be the avoidance, such as social anxiety stemming from their trauma(s), creates problems in their growth, obtaining a job, seeking education. It may be that the exposure must happen in "imaginal exposure." Imaginal exposure is a pairing of relaxation (sometimes hypnotic experience) paired with exposure to the feared event, place, person(s). Since both extreme relaxation and extreme excitation cannot exist concurrently, eventually after several sessions the fear is extinguished to a large extent.

Processing (articulating and elaborating on corrective learning) is a very important aspect of the process and includes traditional cognitive-behavior thought replacement and restructuring.

Relaxation is a prescribed behavior, that as evidence shows, with regular use diminishes the density of the amygdala (the center of anxiety, fear, excitation) for better regulation of emotional experience.