Psychological Treatments VPL Veritas Programming. Because most anxiety disorders do not respond quickly to psychological therapies that focus on a person's emotional past, they are generally thought of as difficult to overcome. For the most part, this reputation is not deserved. Psychological therapies that desensitize a person to feared situations or that teach a person how to recognize and cope with anxious thoughts and feelings have proven effective against most anxiety disorders.
Many people find that their anxiety symptoms are significantly eased without extensive talk therapy.
However, unlike the other anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder typically does require treatment focusing on a person's emotional past. This is not to say that therapies that simply desensitize a person or that teach a person how to defuse anxious thoughts have no place in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. In fact, they usually are important parts of such therapy. Learning to quell intense anxiety generally makes people with post-traumatic stress disorder better able to handle talking with their therapists about trauma in their pasts. Because being actually exposed to the feared situation or object at least initially makes people very anxious, many exposure therapists also teach people simple ways to help them diminish their anxiety.