The PTSD Workbook: Simple, Effective Techniques for Overcoming Traumatic Stress Symptoms
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 1626253706
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the third edition of The PTSD Workbook, psychologists and trauma experts Mary Beth Williams and Soili Poijula offer readers the most effective tools available for overcoming post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
PTSD is an extremely debilitating condition that can occur after exposure to a terrifying event. But whether you’re a veteran of war, a victim of domestic violence or sexual violence, or have been involved in a natural disaster, crime, car accident, or accident in the workplace, your symptoms may be getting in the way of you living your life.
PTSD can often cause you to relive your traumatic experience in the form of flashbacks, memories, nightmares, and frightening thoughts. This is especially true when you are exposed to events or objects that remind you of your trauma. Left untreated, PTSD can lead to emotional numbness, insomnia, addiction, anxiety, depression, and even suicide. So, how can you start to heal and get your life back?
In The PTSD Workbook, Third Edition, psychologists and trauma experts Mary Beth Williams and Soili Poijula outline techniques and interventions used by PTSD experts from around the world to conquer distressing trauma-related symptoms. In this fully revised and updated workbook, you’ll learn how to move past the trauma you’ve experienced and manage symptoms such as insomnia, anxiety, and flashbacks.
Based in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), this book is extremely accessible and easy to use, offering evidence-based therapy at a low cost. This new edition features chapters focusing on veterans with PTSD, the link between cortisol and adrenaline and its role in PTSD and overall mental health, and the mind-body component of PTSD. Clinicians will also find important updates reflecting the new DSM-V definition of PTSD.
This book is designed to give you the emotional resilience you need to get your life back together after a traumatic event.
meditating, thoughts may come in to distract you as you try to calm and quiet your mind. If this happens, you may try to use some imagery to focus your awareness before doing the meditation. If you are able to create clear mental images of the following scenes or things, you might then be able to direct your focus to relaxing. Try to create a clear mental image, right now, of: • your best friend’s face • a turkey waiting to be carved • your bedroom in your present home • a glass of cold
develop anorexia nervosa (you stop eating) or bulimia (you eat a great deal and then make yourself throw up) • if you become completely numb and are unable to feel emotion • if you become unaware of emotion • if you begin to isolate yourself and avoid others • if you have a dramatic change in any normal life pattern If any of these signs appear, take care of yourself before you continue with your work. Should the reactions you are having become too intense, you may find that you need a few
and that this would help destigmatize the wounds suffered by numerous combat veterans. As Ochberg and Shay (2012) note, traumatic memory results from events the person experienced and consists of altered patterns of memory that often persist over time. Gift from Within (www.giftfromwithin.org), a survivor’s website, is at the forefront in attempting to change the terminology. Similar to the first edition, this workbook gives you, the reader, an opportunity to do more than peruse its pages. You
anything you wanted during the trauma. Did you want to dissociate? Did you want to just go away, or did you want to attack the perpetrator? Finally, in the last petal, record any actions you took. Did you choose to escape through dissociation? Did you fight back? Did you participate in some way? If you do not have total recall or even partial recall of any of the sections, you may have some degree of what is called traumatic amnesia, or forgetting. Just write in what you do remember. If you need
6. 2. 7. 3. 8. 4. 9. 5. 10. Military culture also can help create the bog and keep you stuck as you adhere to its values, culture, and missions. When you were at war, you put what you learned in basic training into practice. Your principle job when you were at war was probably to kill or facilitate