4 ms·
Ask HN: Alternatives to Talk Therapy for PTSD
Interested in experiences dealing with and rising above PTSD via routes different from classic talk therapy. Also interested in hearing whether EMDR therapy works or not. I'm also interested in hearing about the effects of gaming on PTSD processing and healing.
- Arubis 4y agoDo you not include EMDR under "Talk Therapy"? If so, you may also want to explore practitioners of SFBT (solution-focused brief therapy) and somatic experiencing therapy. They do involve conversation, but not necessarily directly about the trauma trigger itself.
- b20000 4y agoI did not think that EMDR was mostly talk therapy. I was going by a description from a friend who went through it. As far as I know not every health network offers this (?). When I called to inquire I got a call with someone who asked generic questions and then I never heard back.
- Arubis 4y agoEMDR as a technique isn't itself necessarily talk therapy, but a good clinician will spend time conversing with you & building resources and tools first. It is evidence-based and considered effective, though.
- Arubis 4y agoAlso, worth noting: most insurers and health networks pay somewhat poorly & have a ton of overhead around filing and notes for claims. As a result, many independent clinicians just don't accept insurance; many will set aside some capacity to do pro-bono or sliding scale work for folks that have trouble affording full price services. If your needs are profound and specialized, you may benefit from looking beyond your insurer.
- b20000 4y agook, maybe i should get treated back in europe then, there i don’t need to deal with this BS
- Arubis 4y agohttps://maps.org/ https://maps.org/
- b20000 4y agoI tried CBD oil and that didn't really help.
- Arubis 4y agoYeah, CBD is pretty lightweight. MAPS as a study has historically done a lot of work around treatment-resistant trauma, depression, and PTSD using the assistance of a variety of pretty powerful psychoactives. Ketamine and MDMA have been the high-profile studies, with the MDMA for PTSD treatments showing high effectiveness: https://maps.org/mdma/ptsd/ https://maps.org/mdma/ptsd/
- Mezzie 4y agoI have C-PTSD, which is a little different, but I'm also not a fan of talk therapy/'conventional' therapy. I have also heard good things about EMDR, but haven't tried it myself (I ALSO have eye muscle control problems; go figure). I have tried and am working with a therapist who focuses a lot on somatic work, which is basically relearning and managing your physical responses. We don't spend a ton of time on my thought processes because for the most part those are fine: My problem is that my body hasn't gotten the memo that we're not in danger and I'm so dissociative that instead of dealing with my body's symptoms, I bottle them up until they hurt me. So we go over things like what panic actually looks like/feels like in the body, physical actions I can take to ground myself and/or help myself mentally and why (what parts of the body are being stimulated, etc.) Regarding gaming, there are some interesting studies about the impact of playing Tetris (and possibly some other puzzle games) on mental health and stress responses, but I can't remember if they addressed PTSD in specific or not.
- b20000 4y agothanks for sharing. what i've found is that talk therapists often lack the experience or insight/framework into our specific industry. I think that the issues of our industry are unique and that it requires a certain kind of therapist to understand what one is talking about. or, perhaps I haven't encountered the type of therapist capable to venture into any kind of new territory presented.
- Mezzie 4y agoIronically, I never jumped into the tech industry because of my mental health (though I couldn't articulate it that way back when I decided to go to college for something else, and I do program as a freelancer - I just won't be a tech employee). Still, I can understand having a specific experience you need understood: I got diagnosed with MS my last semester of grad school, so I had to cope with losing any hope of a normal career path, accepting that I was probably going to slowly lose physical capacity, etc. I needed someone who could work within that framework. (For example, imagine trying therapy where part of the worldview is 'you don't know the future/the future will be better'. That's just plain GASLIGHTING in my case!) Regarding tech specific issues, I'd try to come up with a sense of what you need understood and a few questions whose answers would let you determine if the person groks where you're coming from. Things I can think of are: - The hypercompetitiveness and lack of stability in the tech industry. Leaving jobs every year or two is common, as is having a ton of your compensation be in stocks, the companies themselves failing fairly often, etc. It's hard to re-establish a sense of safety if your life is not stable + routine is difficult. - The libertarian/bootstraps type worldview in SV + adjacent types (primarily due to filter bubbles + survivorship bias) can combine with PTSD to create some really, really nasty thought patterns. - The therapist needs to understand systems thinking. I know a lot of my problems come from the fact that I can't turn that approach to things off, which means I both spend a lot of time stressing about system-wide problems I can't do anything about and I don't spend enough time creating heuristics. I try to look at using systems-thinking too much in my daily life is like looking directly at the sun or not wearing earplugs at a concert: Just because I can do something doesn't mean it's the best idea for my long-term health. It's very slow going. But you'd need someone who can understand getting lost in (and genuinely distressed by) these large issues.