Last month I wrote a series of four blog posts about a CBT workshop on memory-focused for adults with PTSD (and a couple of posts about a personal experience of trauma).  The third of these posts discussed how this kind of memory-focused approach could also be helpful for other types of "non-PTSD" trauma such as experiences of grief & loss.  In today's post I want to explore this extended application even further - looking at the use of memory-focused therapy for anxiety & depression, personality disorders, and complex type II trauma.

Still less than three days since the most intense, prolonged, potentially catastrophic experience of my life.  What have I learned ... both personally and as a therapist?  Gratitude ... of course.  Gratitude to the mountain rescue service, gratitude to my wife & family & friends, gratitude for my health, for the extraordinary beauty of this world, for being able to walk, to breath, to smile.  And gratitude can even help me process what happened better. 

(A handout of the key points in this blog post is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

I have written a series of blog posts on Nick Grey's expert workshop on CBT treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder.  The day's focus was particularly on treatment approaches involving the trauma memory itself.  Nick highlighted four interlinked memory-focused methods - exposure & reliving, written narrative, site visit, and discrimination of triggers.  This post is the text of a client handout I subsequently put together discussing how best to go about the written narrative.