Sam Vaknin Exposure Therapy to Confront and Disarm Trauma Triggers

excerpt from https://youtu.be/xrrskAO3hfM
@samvaknin

transcript:
when we treat post-traumatic stress disorders
we commit an inordinate number of mistakes
and I'm talking now about clinicians
for example we force the trauma victim to describe the trauma immediately in the wake of the trauma
this is called debriefing
this is very bad
very bad practice debunked in many many studies

another thing we do
we teach the trauma victim to avoid triggers as a permanent Behavior
this should never be done
avoiding triggers is very important in the initial phase of treating trauma, to allow us to somehow get the patient acquainted with the trauma, and get on with it, move on
But at some point the patient would need to confront the triggers
This is exposure therapy
at some point the patient would need to be retraumatized
long-term avoidance of of triggers increases the likelihood that the affected person will develop a disabling level of post-traumatic disorder of one kind or or another
if you teach the patient to avoid triggers all the time the trauma deepens
if you expose the patient to the trauma and ret traumatize the patient the trauma disappears
identifying and addressing trauma triggers is an important part of PTSD, precisely because at some point we need to expose the patient to the triggers
and we don't have to agree with the affected person
we don't have to enter the affected person, the traumatized person's mind
we don't have to say ah we understand how you're triggered
no it's up to the triggered person to tell us which stimuli caused triggering
this is exposure therapy
if you expose the patient to the trauma and retraumatize the patient
the trauma disappears
this is exposure therapy
confront the triggers which stimuli caused triggering
confront the triggers
the trauma disappears
this is exposure therapy the trauma disappears

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