Traumatic Stress and Relevant Disorders
Our world can be a difficult place where unforeseen things can happen to us. We can experience traumatic events that can leave us with some lingering difficult thoughts and feelings. For some, this involves flashbacks, distressing memories, feeling on edge, being constantly on guard, or feeling numb. Sometimes what we are going through impacts the way we relate to others or how we behave, which interferes with our ability to socialize, take care of ourselves and family, or engage in our occupation effectively. These symptoms can
occur shortly after an event and the symptoms can gradually improve, or in some cases the symptoms can worsen over time. Exposure to traumatic events can happen both in our personal lives as well as in our jobs, and across the lifespan.
How Can HK&A Help Protect Those Who Protect Us
Being a police officer, dispatcher, firefighter, paramedic, or correctional officer can be a tough job. Our clinicians can help you develop the skills you need to manage in your professional and personal life. This can include short-term pre-incident preparedness or post-incident debriefing to help you process acute stress and return to your routines as quick as possible. This type of support has been shown to prevent more serious and long-term post-traumatic reactions.
HK&A also helps those engaged with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) by providing psychological assessments and treatment for injured workers, with particular expertise regarding the unique realities experienced by first responders on the job. Please reach out to our intake coordinator to get this process started at the clinic.
Members of the Canadian Armed Forces, Department of Defense, Military Veterans and RCMP
Current and past serving members of our Canadian military and RCMP also answer a calling to protect and serve Canadian interests. If you are an active member of the Canadian Armed Forces or a military veteran looking for support or are concerned about whether you meet criteria for operational stress injury from your military career, please contact our office. We work with Blue Cross as well as Veterans Affairs Canada to provide psychological assessment for operational stress injury adjudication as well as provide treatment under the Rehabilitation Plan or as part of your Blue Cross A-Line benefits.
What Will My Treatment Look Like?
Psychotherapy can help individuals gain insight, improve relationships with themselves and others, strengthen self-compassion, esteem and self-efficacy, address issues with trust or safety, and help regain control. The clinicians at HK&A are trained in the following treatment modalities that are evidence-based for working with traumatic stress and relevant disorders.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): EMDR is an extensively researched model of psychotherapy that helps people recover from trauma and other distressing life experiences. Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. While many times traumatic experiences can be managed and resolved spontaneously, some memories may need help. When distress from a disturbing event remains, the upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions may create an overwhelming feeling of being back in that moment, or of being “frozen in time.” EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories and allows normal healing to resume. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved. To support the brain in resuming its natural healing abilities, EMDR therapists use bilateral stimulation in the form of eye movements, pulsars, tapping, and/or auditory beeps to support with processing.
EMDR therapy does not require talking in detail about the distressing issue or completing homework between sessions. EMDR therapy may be used within a standard talking therapy, as an adjunctive therapy with a separate therapist, or as a treatment modality by itself.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT): CPT has been proven effective in countless studies to reduce symptoms of traumatic stress related to a wide variety of traumatic events. The goal of CPT is to gain a healthier perspective about the traumatic event and to develop skills to cope with future events. In CPT, you will work with your therapist to understand how the traumatic event has negatively impacted your beliefs/thoughts about yourself, others and the world. During therapy, you will learn strategies to challenge and modify these negative or unhelpful views. Therapy will also focus on how the trauma has impacted issues with safety, trust, power/control, esteem, and intimacy.
CPT is typically delivered over 12-24 sessions. The precise number will depend on a number of factors that are individual to your treatment experience. This therapy involves handouts, and homework writing assignments between each session.
Prolonged Exposure (PE): PE is an evidence-based therapy used in the treatment of traumatic stress. PE begins with helping you understand common reactions to trauma, the role of avoidance, and the difference between a traumatic event and a trauma memory. To help decrease avoidance, you will be asked to complete types of exposure exercises both in session and outside of sessions, with the support of your clinician. This could be imaginal exposure (i.e., in which you envision yourself doing something or listening to recordings). There is also In Vivo exposure (i.e., which is slowly and systematically doing the thing you are avoiding). These types of exposures are a safe, structured, and gradual way of confronting situations and activities you currently avoid.
On average, PE lasts 8-15 sessions. The precise number will depend on a number of factors that are individual to your treatment experience.
For more information, please view this helpful chart comparing the three psychotherapy treatments for trauma as well as medication: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/apps/Decisionaid/compare.aspx
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