Article: During psychotherapy, you express your thoughts and feelings about the traumatic experience that has caused your PTSD. The most common psychotherapy is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). CBT aims to help you overcome your negative thoughts about your experience and instead turn them into more positive or rational thoughts. Talk therapy usually lasts up to 12 weeks but, in many cases, the therapy continues until you feel like you have overcome your PTSD. Psychotherapy can be done one on one or in a group, and it usually needs the support of the whole family for it to work. Ask your family to go to therapy with you if that is something you think you might benefit from. Psychotherapy, specifically CBT, works because it addresses psychological issues directly and also provides you with practical advice on how to manage your life in the shadow of PTSD. Therapy helps you to process what you are feelingshame, anger, guiltabout the trauma you have experienced. Talk therapy can help you to understand why you feel the way that you do and can give you the tools to overcome those feelings. It will also provide you with ways to react in a healthy way to people, places, and things that remind you of the trauma you have experienced. This type of therapy falls under the category of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and focuses on facing your fears and memories head-on. It facilitates your confrontation with your fear by exposing you to the trauma once again (this time safety is guaranteed). The ultimate goal is to help you deal with your fear and to aid you in coping with the emotional distress you feel when the trauma comes back and haunts you. Through exposure therapy, you will learn how to control your memories and realize that they are nothing to be afraid of. Mental imagery (picturing the trauma in your mind), visiting the place where the traumatic event happened, and encouraging you to write about your ordeal is all common tools of exposure therapy. This is another CBT technique that can help you to find a more rational and logical take on what happened to you during the traumatic event. By doing this, you will be able to come to terms with the reality of what has happened and escape the guilt that people with PTSD commonly feel. People who suffer from PTSD feel shame and think that what happened is their fault; cognitive restructuring will help you to see that it is not your fault at all. There are some cognitive restructuring techniques you can try from home, such as tracking the accuracy of your negative thoughts. For example, if you find yourself ruminating, you can note when you ruminate and then note whether your ruminating helped you solve your problems or not. Or, you could try testing your thoughts through your actual behavior. For example, if you believe that you don't have any time to exercise, you could try exercising for 15 minutes and see whether you have less time for other important parts of your life. This sort of psychotherapy can help you to find closure and overcome negative feelings about yourself that the traumatic event caused. This type of therapy is another type of CBT and will teach you to control your anxiety. It goes a step beyond just restructuring your memories and will you to create a healthier mentality about your traumatic experience. The goal of this sort of therapy is to help you reshape the way you view the trauma you experienced before you developed anxiety or depression because of your PTSD. Group therapy, just like any other approach, works better for some people than for others. However, it may help you to overcome your symptoms because it will give you other people to relate to, who have gone through, or are going through, a situation similar to yours. Talking to others who have gone through a similar experience as you can help you to rationalize how you feel, realize you are not alone and feel more "normal." In group therapy, people talk about their experiences and the way those experiences have affected their lives and emotions. Hearing others tell their stories can help to ease feelings of shame, guilt, and anger that you might be experiencing because of your own traumatic event.

What is a summary?
Consider treatment through psychotherapy. Understand why psychotherapy works for those suffering from PTSD. Try exposure therapy. Try cognitive restructuring. Go through stress inoculation training. Consider group therapy.