The Journey Back from PTSD

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
The Journey Back from PTSD

So, how do you know you if you have PTSD? What are the signs?

Symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but less often they may first appear months or years later – often triggered by another traumatic episode. Symptoms may come and go over time; however, if the symptoms last longer than four weeks, and interfere with your work or home life, you might be experiencing PTSD.

While it has become apparent that supportive talk therapy by itself is not very helpful for PTSD, specific trauma-focused therapies that address the way trauma is stored in the mind/body are effective. There are treatment methods that research has shown to be effective for treating trauma:

  • Cognitive Behavior Therapy

  • Prolonged Exposure Therapy

  • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

  • Somatic Psychotherapy

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Psychotherapist Arin M. Bass Joins Mind Therapy Clinic Team

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
Psychotherapist Arin M. Bass Joins Mind Therapy Clinic Team

"My own journey of recovery guided the way into my work with individuals who experience eating disorders...  I believe a trusting therapeutic relationship and building positive coping tools are essential to recovery." - Arin M. Bass, M.A., LMFT

Mind Therapy Clinic welcomes Arin M. Bass, a licensed Psychotherapist who earned her Master's degree in Counseling Psychology with a concentration in Marriage and Family Therapy from The American School of Professional Psychology. She has been practicing since 2010, and for the past several years, her focus has been with adolescents, adults and families in a clinical setting attending to the issues of eating disorders,  body image issues, substance abuse,  and co-morbid diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, and suicidality and self harm.  Arin utilizes a multidisciplinary theoretical perspective with emphasis on Client-Centered, Psychodynamic, Cognitive Behavioral, and Dialectical Behavioral and Family Systems models.

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Welcome Christine Valdez, PhD, PTSD/Trauma Treatment Expert

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
Welcome Christine Valdez, PhD, PTSD/Trauma Treatment Expert

Mind Therapy Clinic welcomes Christine Valdez, Clinical Psychologist and PTSD expert to the team. Dr. Valdez is a licensed clinical psychologist with expertise in empirically supported treatments for trauma-related issues, including post-traumatic stress, depression, and anxiety. She specializes in individual and group therapy for adults who have experienced interpersonal trauma.

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How trauma stress is passed down to children and burdens families with mental disorders - Trauma Series by Kenneth Perlmutter, PhD

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
How trauma stress is passed down to children and burdens families with mental disorders - Trauma Series by Kenneth Perlmutter, PhD

Addiction, compulsion, disordered eating and mental illness typically show up in people from families that have experienced significant losses from which members of the system have never fully recovered.

Families burdened by these legacies of loss find themselves caught in repetitive cycles of illness and relapse, reinforced by learned responses that are transmitted across the generations.  Rather than see these families as dysfunctional, it has proven more useful to think of them as “wounded.” The wounded family system displays a set of environmental characteristics dubbed “the dastardly D’s.”  This vignette describes a family burdened with inherited trauma stress... 

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How do people with PTSD come back to normal? - Trauma Series by David Campell, MD

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
How do people with PTSD come back to normal? - Trauma Series by David Campell, MD

So, how do you know you if you have it? What are the signs?

Symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but less often they may first appear months or years later – often triggered by another traumatic episode. Symptoms may come and go over time; however, if the symptoms last longer than four weeks, and interfere with your work or home life, you might be experiencing PTSD.

While it has become apparent that supportive talk therapy by itself is not very helpful for PTSD, specific trauma-focused therapies that address the way trauma is stored in the mind/body are effective.  There are treatment methods that research has shown to be effective for treating trauma: 

  • Cognitive Behavior Therapy 
  • Prolonged Exposure Therapy 
  • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
  • Somatic Psychotherapy
Read More

Who gets PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and why? - Trauma Series by David Campell, MD

/ Mind Therapy Clinic/
Who gets PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and why? - Trauma Series by David Campell, MD

Since announcing Trauma Services as a specialty at Mind Therapy Clinic, we’ve been receiving a lot of questions about therapy as it relates to trauma. Most commonly people want to know what is PTSD, and who gets it and why?

With so many traumatic experiences in today’s news – from police shootings, racial tensions, war, car crashes, crosswalk and bicycle accidents, physical and sexual assaults, gun violence, natural disasters, racial and economic fallouts, etc. - it makes sense that there is a heightened awareness and interest in the need to fully understand the impact of these events and treatments for those who are affected.  Media often presents PTSD with a military focus, but recent research has revealed that civilian PTSD is 13 times more common. In fact, an estimated one out of every nine women develops PTSD (more than twice as likely as men).*  So, what is considered PTSD and who should receive treatment? 

Let’s start with how does someone become traumatized?

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