Transcript
When you first come into treatment,
you're going to be given several choices.
There are different kinds of treatments,
and treatment that works for one individual might not be
the best treatment for another individual.
Certainly, if you take a medication,
you have a pretty good idea what to expect.
The doctor will write a prescription, you'll take the medicine,
but he or she is going to ask you about your symptoms,
so you need to be prepared to talk about
the things that have been bothering you.
Now when we talk about psychotherapy,
I really do need to prepare you a bit.
What people with PTSD do very, very well
is avoid thinking about what happened to them.
They're very, very good at not thinking about the traumatic
experiences, they're very good at avoiding any kind of
situation that may remind them of the terror that they felt
when the roadside bomb came into their barracks.
So what the therapist is going to ask you to do
is, in some respects, precisely what you've spent
all your time not doing, and that's, they're going to ask you
to talk about the traumatic experience,
and you got to be prepared for that.
So what we've discovered so far is that the treatment
is successful if you're willing to engage your demons,
if you're willing to confront the memories
that keep you up at night, that haunt you in your nightmares,
that you're trying to avoid, that are causing you to
shut down emotionally, and that's not easy.
That's a tall order.
That's why you really need to be ready to come.
And if you're not quite ready, we can help you get ready.
Once you decide to get treatment, you've got to realize
that you're deciding to do some really hard work,
but there is going to be a major payoff
if you're willing to engage in the effort.