Feel it, stay with it, share it, and let it go. Take your life back from stress and trauma using self-help versions of proven treatments. Up to 90% of adults in the US will experience one or more traumatic events in their lifetimes, including interpersonal violence, traffic collisions, and sexual assault. Traumatic events and other difficult experiences (such as miscarriage, job loss, and divorce) can have a long-lasting impact on mental health and well-being. While most who suffer a trauma naturally recover over time, for others difficulties continue, and may lead to full-blown depression, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), substance use, anxiety disorders, and other problems that interfere with healthy daily functioning. Making Meaning of Difficult Experiences is a self-guided mental health resource for people who have had potentially traumatic experiences and who wish to work through them independently, outside of a formal therapeutic setting. Based on psychological treatments with strong scientific support, this book introduces readers to several useful tools that will help them to emotionally process difficult experiences, with the goal of moving on from the event and building future resilience. Many years of research (much of which has been conducted by the authors of this volume) have shown that people who try to avoid memories and reminders of difficult experiences are more likely to develop PTSD, depression, and other problems. Conversely, those who work to process the memory gradually regain a general sense of wellbeing, experiencing fewer mental health issues over time. This program is unique in that it is intended to be wholly self-directed. Readers can learn about and then immediately practice the strategies described, moving through and then past difficult experiences—whether they happened last week or years ago. The program takes the reader step-by-step through four skill sets to facilitate emotional processing of difficult experiences: Memory Exposure and Processing, Behavioral Activation, Social Connection, and Self-Care. Each set begins with a short description, followed by a self-assessment. Readers use this self-evaluation to determine what is working or not working for them, enabling them to focus more on certain skills, or to complete the full program based on their needs.

Those who have experienced a traumatic event and are having trouble moving past feelings of fear, shame and guilt, or helplessness may be diagnosed with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Reclaiming Your Life from a Traumatic Experience: A Prolonged Exposure Treatment Program can help readers to overcome and reclaim their lives from PTSD. Best used in combination with treatment by a mental health professional, the second edition of this Workbook, along with the accompanying Therapist Guide, will help readers work through PTSD regardless of the type of trauma experienced-be it a motor vehicle accident, physical or sexual assault, or combat-related event. The program outlined in this book will reduce anxiety and distress, teaching readers to face memories of trauma while processing their emotions about the event using a scientifically tested and proven technique called Prolonged Exposure Therapy. Instead of avoiding or escaping situations that provoke anxiety and other negative emotions, readers will learn how to reevaluate feelings and beliefs to think differently about their traumatic experiences. Complete with information on PTSD, as well as case examples, self-assessment tools, and homework assignments, Reclaiming Your Life from a Traumatic Experience is an invaluable tool on the road to recovery from PTSD.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy is an effective, highly flexible, and very well researched intervention to reduce the symptoms of PTSD across a variety of traumatized populations. The second edition of Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Emotional Processing of Traumatic Experiences, Therapist Guide, along with the accompanying Workbook, provides all of the tools necessary for trained mental health providers to implement this first-line PTSD treatment with their patients. This model is individualized to address the needs of a variety of trauma survivors. Leaders in clinical practice, training, and research in the field of PTSD treatment, the authors have revised the Guide throughout to reflect the many advances in PTSD research that have occurred since the release of the first edition, including key adjustments to the underlying theory as well as additional evidence for modifications and individualization for more complex patient presentations and military populations. The Guide provides a concise but thorough description of the key components of the program, how to implement them, and when and how to consider adaptations.

After reviewing the relevant treatment literature, the authors detail how to assess and treat PTSD using a cognitive-behavioral approach. Co mplete instructions are given for planning treatment, as well as for i ntroducing the patient to the various interventions. Nine exposure and stress management techniques are then detailed, including imaginal ex posure (trauma reliving), in vivo exposure, relaxation training, thoug ht-stopping, cognitive restructuring, covert modeling, and role-playin g. Enhancing the book's clinical utility are numerous case examples il lustrating how to implement the techniques, as well as explanations of how to cope with common problems and complications in treatment. The final chapter presents detailed outlines of three suggested treatment programs.

Prolonged Exposure for PTSD in Intensive Outpatient Programs (PE-IOP) presents an innovative PTSD treatment model for the use of prolonged exposure (PE) in residential and intensive outpatient programs, which increases access to care and retention in care while providing transformational symptom outcomes. Drs. Rauch, Rothbaum, Smith, and Foa present the elements of the PE protocol along with all the logistics for how to provide PE in an intensive outpatient program. PE is the most widely studied treatment for PTSD, with over 100 studies showing its efficacy for PTSD and comorbid patient populations-from single incident and multiple incident traumas of all types (e.g., combat, sexual assault, etc.) Variations and considerations for implementation are presented to allow providers designing programs to consider what best fits their patient population and setting. Patient and provider forms are included for use. As leaders in clinical practice, training, and research in the field of PTSD treatment, Drs. Rauch, Rothbaum, Smith, and Foa provide concise but thorough description of the key components of the program, how to implement them, and when and how to consider adaptations.

Anxiety affects millions, manifesting as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder, panic disorder, phobias, post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD), and social anxiety disorder. Not only are anxiety disorders common, but they are also crippling, frequently co-occurring and predict high risk for depressive disorders. Shared mechanisms may explain the overlapping features of many anxiety disorders and account for associations with other highly-impairing conditions, such as major depression and substance use. Beyond risk for specific disorders, anxiety also predicts a number of other adverse outcomes, including suicidal behavior, medical problems, social, and economic difficulties. Conversely, disorder-specific mechanisms may also exist and explain the unique features of each syndrome. Thus, it is important to understand both shared and specific aspects of anxiety. The Primer on Anxiety Disorders provides early-stage practitioners and trainees, as well as seasoned clinicians and researchers, with need-to-know knowledge on diagnosis and treatment. Clinical cases are used throughout the book to enhance understanding of and illustrate specific disorders, comorbid conditions and clinical issues. To facilitate an integrative approach, content allows clinicians to understand patient characteristics and tailor interventions. The integrated approach of each chapter includes recent research on genetics and neuroscience to understand the mechanisms of anxiety disorders, focusing on the forthcoming new nosology in DSM-5. Chapters further integrate innovative advances in clinical research providing research on a range of discoveries regarding biomarkers of illness, biological predictors of treatments and the effect of treatment on neurocircuitry.

This powerful client workbook is written in an encouraging and easy-to-understand style specifically for women who have been sexually assaulted and have developed chronic symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Clients learn how cognitive-behavioral therapy has helped other victims and how it can work for them. This book explains how to distinguish PTSD symptoms from other disorders and teaches powerful techniques for overcoming these symptoms. In writing this book, the authors aim to address two goals. First, they want to present information about PTSD and related problems in language understandable to nonprofessionals. This information will include a review of the studies on posttrauma problems and on the effectiveness of different treatments. They also describe why some survivors develop PTSD and others do not. The second goal of the book is to provide a detailed client workbook for the treatment of trauma-related problems, especially PTSD, to assist clients working with a therapist. The authors are aware of the fact that people have different problems and different needs. What works for one person may not work for another. Therefore, they describe several different treatment techniques. The book is organized around the different cognitive-behavioral techniques that have been studied and proven effective with women sufferers of PTSD following an assault. Throughout the book, the authors focus mainly on women who have been sexually assaulted and as a result developed chronic symptoms of PTSD, which have disturbed their daily functioning and cause them emotional distress. Most of the examples they use to demonstrate the cognitive-behavioral techniques are drawn from their experience in treating rape survivors. However, the cognitive-behavioral procedures outlined here have been as successful in helping women who have been sexually abused in childhood and adult female survivors of nonsexual assaults, like aggravated assault and robbery. Other survivors of traumas such as natural disasters and car accidents were also helped by this cognitive-behavioral approach.

After reviewing the relevant treatment literature, the authors detail how to assess and treat PTSD using a cognitive-behavioral approach. Co mplete instructions are given for planning treatment, as well as for i ntroducing the patient to the various interventions. Nine exposure and stress management techniques are then detailed, including imaginal ex posure (trauma reliving), in vivo exposure, relaxation training, thoug ht-stopping, cognitive restructuring, covert modeling, and role-playin g. Enhancing the book's clinical utility are numerous case examples il lustrating how to implement the techniques, as well as explanations of how to cope with common problems and complications in treatment. The final chapter presents detailed outlines of three suggested treatment programs.