Prolonged Exposure (PE) for Trauma

After a traumatic event, many individuals experience distress and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This distress may be highest when dealing with memories, thoughts, feelings, and situations that are related to the trauma.

Exposure therapy is a type of therapy that helps you decrease distress about your trauma. This therapy works by helping you approach trauma-related thoughts, feelings, and situations that you have been avoiding due to the distress they cause. Repeated exposure to these thoughts, feelings, and situations helps reduce the power they have to cause distress.

Prolonged Exposure (PE) is one exposure therapy that works for many people who have experienced trauma. It has four main parts

• Education.
• Breathing. 
• Real world practice. 
• Talking through the trauma. 

With the help of your therapist, you can change how you react to stressful memories. In PE, you work with your therapist to approach trauma-related situations and memories at a comfortable pace. Usually, you start with things that are less distressing and move towards things that are more distressing. A round of PE therapy most often involves meeting alone with a therapist for about 8 to 15 sessions. Most therapy sessions last 90 minutes.