Specific CBT Approaches

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Behavioural Coping
  • Allowing yourself reminders of the trauma can cause overwhelming anxiety, depression, or anger. This is a legitimate concern.
  • Grounding skills can help you regain your focus on the present moment and remind yourself that you are currently safe. 
  • Relaxation and breathing techniques serve the same purpose 
  • These techniques help when you are reminded of the traumatic event and during painful flashbacks. 
Exposure Therapy 
  • A lot of energy is often spent avoiding people, places and things that remind you of the traumatic experience. 
  • In the short term, avoidance strategies work fairly well. But in the long term, these strategies can cause your life to become very limited.
  • Premise: Talk about your traumatic experience in small, planned and manageable portions. (Talking, writing, or confronting in small steps situations that remind you of the traumatic event.)
  • Based on the principle of systematic desensitization: Pairing trauma related thoughts and memories with new physical reactions. 
  • Need for obtaining good coping skills before taking on these difficult feelings.
Stress Inoculation Training (SIT)
  • Helps develop an awareness of what triggers your anxiety and flashbacks. 
  • First phase: Learning relaxation skills, breathing and looking at the ways you think about trauma. 
  • Use imagery to visualize yourself successfully dealing with trauma related triggers. 
  • Practice what you might say when confronted with a difficult situation e.g.: when you feel threatened and vulnerable. 
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
  • Writing about the traumatic event and reading the account repeatedly in sessions with your therapist. 
  • Identification of stuck points - thoughts that involve powerlessness, self blame and guilt. 
  • Identify and slowly change unhelpful thoughts about safety, trust, power, self-esteem and intimacy

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