As I continue on my 12-week run of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), I am starting to experience its healing results.
I wrote: Cognitive Processing Therapy: A Path To Healing From Trauma as an introduction to CPT.
Below is a brief overview of CPT by the American Psychiatric Association:
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is a structured form of cognitive-behavioral therapy designed to help individuals process and overcome the
effects of trauma, particularly in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Overview of CPT
CPT is generally delivered over 12 sessions and helps patients learn how to challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to the trauma. In so doing, the patient creates a new understanding and conceptualization of the traumatic event so that it reduces its ongoing negative effects on current life.
Stuck Points
Simply stated, but not easy to uncover, Stuck Points are beliefs as a result of trying to make sense of a traumatic event.
Stuck Points are an attempt to reconcile what happened by trying to figure out what I did wrong, as a way to prevent bad things from happening in the future.
Examples are:
“I must be on guard at all times”
“I can’t trust my judgment”
“People in authority will always hurt you”
The more I say something to myself, the more I come to believe it is a fact and the less I notice contradictory evidence.
These are STUCK POINTS – they prevent recovery.
Recovery means changing my beliefs about myself, others and the world to include new information: learning to accept that bad things, tragedies can happen to good people.
Discovering Stuck Points
CPT focuses on one traumatic event.
My therapist and I reviewed my history. From this history, I picked one tragic situation I struggle to reconcile.
I then made a list of my beliefs about myself, others and the world as a result of this traumatic event.
Stuck Points usually go like this:
“If I had done this, ….. Then that would not have happened.”
The next step is to start challenging these beliefs.
I struggle to find words to explain how incredibly healing this is.
CPT picks up momentum as it moves along.
I am still working on challenging my stuck points with these questions:
- What is the evidence against this Stuck Point?
- What information are you not including about your Stuck Point?
- Does your Stuck Point include all-or-none terms (such as “all, “never”) or extreme words or phrases such as need, should, must, can’t or every time?
- In what way is your Stuck Point over-focused on just one piece of the event?
- How is the source of information for this Stuck point questionable?
- How is your Stuck point confusing something that is possible with something that is definite?
- In what way is your Stuck Point based on feelings, rather than facts?
My therapist and I review the answer together.
This is hard work, but the payoff is profound inner peace.
S, 🌻