(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.  

This is the third in a series of posts triggered by Nick Grey's workshop on memory-focused approaches in CBT for adults with PTSD.  In the second post yesterday, I wrote about " ... treatment structure".  In today's post I want to step back for a moment and get a broader perspective.  These trauma-focused treatments have much wider applicability than just for DSM-IV-TR congruent, single episode traumas, and it's this wider applicability that's a major reason for me doing this workshop.

Yesterday I wrote an introductory post on this "Memory-focused approaches ...

I've just arrived from Scotland off the sleeper for the two days of the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) Spring Workshops and Conference. Today it's workshops and we have a choice of five. I'm going to Nick Grey's on "Memory-focused approaches in cognitive therapy for adults with PTSD" . The publicity reads:

"Guidelines from around the world for the treatment of PTSD in adults recommend trauma-focused CBT as a first line treatment. In essence ‘trauma-focused’ means placing an emphasis on discussing the details of the traumatic memories. This can be emotionally demanding for both patient and therapist. Despite the treatment guidelines many therapists still do not use ‘trauma-focused’, i.e. memory-focused, approaches.

"Those who do not have the power over the story that dominates their lives - the power to retell it, reexperience it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change - truly are powerless because they cannot think new thoughts"   Salman Rushdie 

I read a lot of research.  When I find an article of particular interest I download it to my bibliographic database - EndNote - which currently contains over 15,300 abstracts. 

I wrote yesterday about Marylene Cloitre et al's fine recent research study "Treatment for PTSD Related to Childhood Abuse: A Randomized Controlled Trial." I ended the post with the paragraph: For me, her work is both exciting and also raises a whole series of questions.  These include 1.) Would her skills-based plus trauma processing approach be relevant for others suffering from particularly severe forms of PTSD (e.g.