Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Trauma gets you to look at, and challenge, the unhelpful thoughts and ideas you have developed since the trauma. It slowly helps you to face the painful thoughts, feelings, and situations you have probably been avoiding. [Parts of this therapy are similar to two other highly recommended options: Cognitive Therapy for PTSD and Prolonged Exposure Therapy.]
You and your service provider will identify the situations, places, people, and things that you are avoiding because they are triggering – they remind you of the traumatic event. You will be asked to think of something that you want to be able to do again, something that is safe but that you have been avoiding because of your trauma. Once your goal is set, you and your service provider will break the activity down into manageable steps.
Starting with the easiest step, you will be asked to practice doing the step until you are able to do it with less distress. When you master that step, you move to the next one, until you have finished all the steps. In this way, you will re-learn that the situation, places, people, and things that were triggering are now safe and manageable.
In addition to these non-avoiding strategies, with the help of work sheets, you will learn to recognize that common ways that you might have been thinking about the trauma that haven’t been helpful, such as negative thinking, or always expecting bad or catastrophic things to happen. [This is similar to another highly recommended therapy: Cognitive Therapy for PTSD.] Instead, you will be taught new ways of thinking which provide more balance and asked to take notice of any changes and how they make you feel. Through this process, you will learn that when your thoughts and feelings about the trauma are more balanced, you are likely to feel less guilt, shame, and depression. You can also learn other strategies like healthy coping skills, mindfulness, relaxation, and skills training like assertiveness training. After treatment, memories of the trauma should feel less stressful. You should feel less emotionally numb. And, feelings of being on edge and reactive will likely lessen too.