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The second session was the hardest.

Michelle Fisher (US Air Force, 2000 - 2011) talks about what PTSD treatment was like.

Transcript

In my first session in Prolonged Exposure therapy,

I was very anxious.

I needed a Valium -- not a Valium, a Xanax to go.

And most of it was just introductory stuff,

so I was kind of setting myself up for, you know,

anxiousness that I didn't need.

But it was the second session that was the hardest,

and that was when we went through all of my traumas.

I have more than one, most Veterans do,

and you have to choose which one is the worst,

which one affects you the most,

which one gives you the most flashbacks and nightmares,

and that one was really hard.

And the therapist asks you questions, and you have to

answer them and scale them and really think about it.

And I don't know, with me, there were things

that I didn't want to think about

and I hadn't thought about in years.

My trauma that we actually focused on

happened when I was eight,

so it had nothing to do with the military,

but that was the one that we thought would help me the most.

So, the idea behind Prolonged Exposure therapy is

if you work on your worst trauma, then it naturally

brings all your other ones down, too.

It, kind of, works on all of them at the same time.

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