PTSD Program

PE is a behavioral therapy designed to help individuals gradually reclaim their lives from fear, avoidance, and hyperarousal. After a trauma, it’s natural to want to avoid reminders of what happened, including thoughts, emotions, people, places, or even internal sensations. While avoidance can offer short-term relief, it tends to reinforce fear and prolong suffering.

PE helps clients safely confront what they’ve been avoiding, both in their memories and in real life. This happens through two main strategies:

• Imaginal exposure: Clients revisit the trauma memory in a detailed, intentional, and supported way, telling the story aloud with their therapist and processing the meaning and emotions attached to it. This helps the brain integrate the experience and reduces the “emotional charge” associated with the memory over time.
• In vivo exposure: Clients gradually face trauma-related triggers in their day-to-day lives, such as driving, public places, or crowded rooms, so they can rebuild confidence and reengage with life.

Through repeated, structured exposure, clients learn that the trauma is in the past, that reminders are not dangerous, and that they can handle distress without avoiding it. PE is especially effective for individuals struggling with re-experiencing symptoms, avoidance behaviors, and hyperarousal, and is often life-changing for those who feel trapped by the ripple effects of trauma.

Cognitive Processing Therapy is a cognitive-behavioral treatment that focuses on helping clients make sense of what happened and resolve the “stuck points”, trauma-related beliefs that interfere with recovery. After trauma, it’s common to develop distorted or rigid beliefs about the event, oneself, or others. These beliefs may sound like:

• “It was my fault.”
• “I should have done something differently.”
• “I’ll never be safe again.”
• “No one can be trusted.”
• “I’m broken.”

CPT provides a structured, supportive way to identify these beliefs, examine their accuracy, and replace them with more balanced, adaptive perspectives. Clients learn to challenge cognitive distortions, reduce self-blame, and rebuild trust in themselves and others.

CPT is particularly effective for those struggling with guilt, shame, moral injury, or meaning-making after trauma. By working through the beliefs that keep trauma “stuck,” clients are able to reduce distress, reconnect with values, and regain a sense of identity that extends beyond the trauma.