The PTSD Workbook

Trauma survivors need to find ways to work through their experiences and get a sense of meaning and understanding is great. While the majority of those who have experienced direct trauma or who have witnessed trauma will heal, even persons who do not develop full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, will experience a number of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress: flashbacks; intrusive thoughts and memories; hyperreactivity; avoidance of persons, places, things, and other triggers; jumpiness; and other symptoms. Other persons have experienced lifelong traumas that are character changing; many of these people suffer from a syndrome that researchers are just beginning to describe, called complex PTSD. This workbook was conceptualized as a resource for the survivor who experiences a few or many of the symptoms of PTSD or complex PTSD. When we were first asked to develop this book, we asked colleagues to share exercises that might help survivors do the work themselves. We also began to focus on the exercises we use in our own clinical work. Indeed, our clinical experience is what makes us qualified to author this book. Both of us are primarily grunt workers in the trenches of the field of trauma. We have met with many clients on a regular basis for both short-term and long-term therapy. That extensive experience allows us to say that though the road of healing may be long and difficult, healing can and does happen. In this workbook, you will have the opportunity to complete numerous exercises that will give you insight into your symptoms, your beliefs, your behaviors, and your feelings about the trauma or traumas you endured. Many of these exercises can be completed in the book itself, so that the book becomes a record of your recovery from trauma as well as a resource for you to turn to again and again throughout that recovery. Other exercises can be completed in a separate notebook or journal, which can also be used to expand upon the exercises you complete in the book or to record your other thoughts and feelings along your journey to healing. We hope that this book will help you on that journey.