Many people believe that PTSD is a lifelong disorder. If you’ve always thought that was true, you might be astonished to learn that not only can you recover, you can do this in as little as 6 weeks with intensive treatment!

I offer CPT (cognitive processing therapy) to treat PTSD. I chose this therapy for some important reasons:

• it’s extremely effective and has a 30-year track record backing it up

• it’s quick – generally 12 sessions

• we track your progress at every session so you don’t have more sessions than you need

• it doesn’t require you to share the details of your trauma with me

These are all aligned with my personal values of wanting to offer brief and highly effective treatments. I also believe that people who have suffered trauma shouldn’t have to relive it over and over in order to feel better.

Does it sound too good to be true? It’s one of the trauma therapies that the Veteran’s Administration provides soldiers and it is the therapy that Kansas City’s own Jason Kander underwent when he went for help with his PTSD.

CPT has been shown to be effective for PTSD for a wide range of traumas, including:

• combat trauma

• childhood trauma

• sexual trauma

• multiple traumas

So, what do you have to do in this therapy?

• You have to be able to give me a headline of your trauma, just a few words so I have an idea of what it involved. (“I was raped” or “I had a miscarriage,” or “I was deployed to Afghanistan,” for example).

• You are asked to create an impact statement of the trauma. This does not require you to share details about the traumatic event. Instead, you will describe how you explain your trauma (many people believe they are to blame for it in some way) and what you have concluded as a result of it (e.g., “all men are dangerous”). This impact statement can be written by hand or on a computer or dictated into the free app designed specifically for this treatment. (The data is saved only to your phone).

• You have to be willing to do daily homework. This homework be addressing the beliefs and conclusions you shared in your impact statement. No details about the traumatic event are required. The homework can be written or dictated by speech to text. There is a free app designed specifically for this treatment. (The data is saved only to your phone).

• You will have the option to write an account of your trauma if you feel it would be helpful, but you are not required to do so.

• Take a brief PTSD assessment prior to each session.

I said you could eliminate your PTSD in as little as 6 weeks, and you can! If you are willing to have 2 sessions a week, you can be done in 6 weeks. This is an intense program because you have to do the same amount of homework as you would if you had one session a week, but if you are ready to get back to living instead of reacting to triggers, we can do it quickly. If you do one session per week, expect it to take 12 weeks to complete treatment. I will not provide this treatment at anything less than once per week. Sessions are an hour.

The typical treatment is designed to be 12 sessions but CPT is tailored to what you need. By doing that PTSD assessment before each session, we can see each week how much improvement you are making (or that you haven’t improved, almost always because homework wasn’t done). This allows us to know when we need to add a couple of sessions or when we can end treatment early. You will know you aren’t having any more sessions than you need. Treatment is typically 12 sessions, but it can vary from as few as 8 to as many as 15 and because we track how you are responding, you’ll know you are getting what you need.