By Madeline Swanbeck
Starting therapy can be a very scary endeavor. The uncertainty of what lays ahead can keep so many from seeking out support. Many people think that therapy may just consist of “talking about your feelings.” But, to someone who already knows their feelings, or who may not even be able to think about or identify with those feelings, this can be even more unhelpful and uncomfortable.
At the Women’s Center of Greater Lansing, the process of signing up for services will be very similar for most clients. You will be added to our waitlist, either online or in person, and then contacted when we have availability for new clients. We will have you sign forms either before coming to, or upon arrival for your first appointment, and these forms will both signify that you are consenting to services, and give your clinician a very brief glance at what you might benefit from the most.
After completing your forms, you will dive right into services with your clinician! Each client will get services that are geared towards them and their specific needs, so the experiences that one person has may not be what another person has. At the Women’s Center, we do behavioral therapy practices, and do not focus on talk therapy. But what do these look like, and why might they be beneficial for Domestic Violence or Intimate Partner Violence survivors?
One type of therapy we provide is called CPT, or Cognitive Processing Therapy. This type of therapy is specifically for individuals diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and is designed to reduce symptoms so one can be impacted less intensely, and less frequently. According to the American Psychological Association, CPT is the recommended treatment for those with PTSD, and takes place over about 12 sessions. In the beginning, clients are educated on the relationship between thoughts and emotions, and are able to identify what may be a PTSD symptom for them. Then, the client is led to a more formal processing of the specific things that have caused trauma. This is heavily reliant on the clinician to use specific methods of questioning, which in turn allows the client to learn how to stop avoiding the negative feelings associated with the trauma. Being able to face these feelings head on can be very scary, but can also lead to the most amount of progress in healing. After the skills have been developed, the clinician will help the patient use these strategies day-to-day. There are multiple ways this therapy may be implemented, but it has shown incredible amounts of difference in a relatively short amount of time, and can be imperative to living a relatively normal life when it seems to be impossible.
We also offer EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy. This type of therapy was also developed for the treatment of PTSD, but takes a much different approach from CPT. EMDR uses the memories themselves to restructure how the brain responds to them. This treatment has 5 phases – History taking, preparing the client, assessing the target memory, processing the memory to adaptive resolution (which takes place over three phases), and evaluating the treatment results. (American Psychological Association) In the history-taking phase, the clinician will get a full history of the client, and will work to identify the specific memories, or events, that they want to target. Then, the clinician will prepare the client for what the treatment entails. This includes giving them tools to manage the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that may be brought up by focusing on the memories. EMDR therapy is incredibly useful when someone has been repressing memories for a long time.
While, yes, sometimes therapy is just “talking about your feelings,” evidence-based, behavioral therapy is so much more than that. Our clinicians are trained professionals, and the outcomes speak for themselves.
References
“Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).” American Psychological Association. Accessed October 24, 2024. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/cognitive-processing-therapy.