Details

Assessment

A PTSD intake assessment session is typically the first meeting you’ll have with me, designed to gather important information about your background, symptoms, and experiences related to trauma. The session helps me understand your specific needs and establish a foundation for treatment. The goal is to gather the information needed to create a customized treatment plan that helps you heal and recover from PTSD.

Accelerated PE therapy

Accelerated PE includes all the components of traditional PE, but instead of having sessions once per week, sessions occur three or more times per week. This accelerated pace, sometimes called “massed”, has been associated with rapid treatment gains and reduced risk of drop-out from PE therapy.

Consultation

Thrive Psychology provides ongoing consultation for therapists who have completed their initial training in PE. PE consultation is a platform where therapists can receive expert feedback from Thrive Psychology as they implement PE, which allows them to refine their skills and gain more confidence in their practice. This kind of continued support is essential in maintaining high standards of care and improving patient outcomes.

Thrive Psychology provides PE consultation for both accelerated and traditional PE; however, accelerated PE consultation requires multiple consult meetings per week in order to keep up with the accelerated pace of the therapy.

Traditional PE therapy

Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy is a structured, evidence-based, cognitive-behavioral treatment for PTSD that focuses on helping individuals confront and process their traumatic memories in a safe and supportive way. The goal is to reduce the distress associated with those memories and help individuals regain control over their lives. The main components of PE include:

Education about PTSD: PE therapy begins with explaining how PTSD works, the role of avoidance in maintaining symptoms, and how exposure can help break the cycle of fear and avoidance. Understanding this is crucial for the healing process.

Breathing Techniques: In the early stages, the therapist may teach breathing techniques to help manage stress, anxiety and distress in daily life.

In Vivo Exposure: In vivo exposure involves approaching activities, situations or places that are reminders of the trauma but that are objectively safe. These situations are often avoided due to the strong feelings they stir up, but through gradual, repeated exposure, clients can reduce the intensity of their emotional reactions to these activities, situations, and places.

Imaginal Exposure: This involves recalling and narrating the traumatic event(s) in detail. The client is asked to describe the trauma repeatedly in a session, which allows them to approach the memories without avoiding. Over time, the goal is to reduce the emotional intensity associated with these memories, to decrease distress, and to emotionally process the traumatic experience(s) resulting in new learning.

Processing and Reflection: After each exposure, the therapist and client reflect on the experience, noting any changes in their thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. The therapist encourages the client to process how the exposure affects their beliefs and what they are learning from the experiencing of revisiting the trauma memory.

Prolonged Exposure therapy usually takes about 8 to 15 sessions, depending on the individual’s needs. In standard PE, sessions are typically weekly, with assignments to practice exposure between sessions. The therapy is designed to be short-term and focused on helping the individual heal from their traumatic experiences.

PE therapy is a powerful and effective treatment for PTSD, helping individuals break free from the cycle of trauma and fear, and regain a sense of empowerment and emotional wellbeing.

Training

Thrive Psychology provides training on a range of topics such as PTSD assessment, traditional PE implementation, accelerated PE implementation, virtual/telehealth delivery of PE, and supervision of accelerated PE implementation.