Our therapists offer PTSD & trauma therapy in Woodbridge, VA

My competency and preferred modality are based around trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. I like to utilize this TF-CBT because it helps clients understand their triggered responses, difficulty with emotion regulation, interpersonal instability, and how these issues can influence their behavior. I'm trying to understand what they want to see in their life and help them learn to manage their intense feelings and emotional responses.

When using TF-CBT, I like to teach:

• Recognizing emotions on the feelings wheel, focusing on the most dysregulating emotions.
• Learning about the cognitive triangle, i.e. how triggers influence your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
• Coping skills and strategies for managing and regulating trauma-related symptoms.
• How to recognize, challenge, and reframe cognitive distortions, otherwise known as automatic negative thoughts.
• Addressing barriers to change and the ability to regulate emotions by cultivating awareness and mindfulness.
• Learning communication skills to express feelings, how to advocate for their needs with the people in their lives, how to be confident taking appropriate pauses in order to respond rather than react, and being able to advocate for support.
• Breathing exercises.
• Processing journaling.
• Cooling the vagus nerve.
• Reality checking fears and anxieties; how to recognize they are safe and able to ground themselves.
• Cognitive restructuring.

I can tell a client is making meaningful progress in individual trauma therapy when they come back session after session and are able to confidently report and process their ability to use skills and strategies that regulate intense emotional responses after being triggered. They may also report consistently being able to address needs and incorporate healthy routines and habits they have been working on in treatment. Finally, when they are using terminology they learned in sessions, and demonstrate increased awareness and ability to regulate emotions and manage whatever they are there working on in treatment.

I encourage clients to supplement their work in individual therapy with positive, healthy, and effective activities, or what we refer to as pleasant events, in their daily lives. We may discuss activities, practices, routines, and habits that provide life satisfaction and reduce current reactions to triggers in order to address triggers with “mindful responses” after pausing to reflect on the situation.

I encourage clients to prepare for their first individual session focused on trauma by thinking about the areas of stress, responses to triggers (if they know them), the history they are “stuck on,” and what symptoms they want to address. It's important to know what symptoms they are experiencing, problems they are facing, and future goals in their life they want to work toward, but also it is important to consider how they respond to treatment. For example, they may not like to process traumatic experiences in evening sessions due to the fact that they may trigger additional stress responses that could cause sleep disturbances.