Tyler Slay is a Licensed Professional Counselor offering evidence-based therapy for anxiety, OCD, and trauma in Madison, Mississippi.

Tyler provides specialized treatment for trauma and PTSD, helping clients understand how past experiences shape current responses, and how to move forward with clarity and self-compassion. Online counseling is available to anyone residing in Mississippi.

What Is PTSD?

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a set of symptoms that can develop after someone experiences a traumatic event. According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), a traumatic event is defined as one in which a person experiences, witnesses, or is confronted with an event that involves actual or threatened death, serious injury, or a threat to the physical integrity of themselves or others. Examples of such events include serious car accidents, sexual assault, physical attacks, violent robberies or muggings, the sudden death of a loved one, military combat, torture, natural disasters, and being diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness.

PTSD involves three main clusters of symptoms that persist for at least a month:

1. Reliving the Traumatic Event – This might include nightmares, flashbacks, daydreams, or triggers that make someone feel like they are back in the midst of the trauma.
   

2. Avoidance – The person may go out of their way to avoid reminders of the event or numb themselves with substances or distractions because the reminders are so distressing or uncomfortable.
   

3. Feeling on Edge – They might feel constantly anxious, irritable, or tense. Many also struggle with sleep problems.
   

As with all mental health conditions, not everyone fits neatly into a diagnostic box. Many people experience symptoms related to trauma that do not meet the full criteria for PTSD but can still benefit from evidence-based trauma treatments. Just because you do not match the clinical description perfectly does not mean you are not struggling with the aftermath of trauma. Life events like divorce, chronic illness, job loss, or painful breakups can often lead to similar symptoms.

It is also important to note that not everyone who experiences a traumatic event will develop PTSD. In fact, it is estimated that about 50% of people in the U.S. will experience a qualifying traumatic event in their lifetime, but only about 6% will go on to develop PTSD. A few factors that can make someone more likely to develop PTSD include a history of previous traumatic experiences, a history of emotional difficulties, lack of support from family or friends after the trauma, and avoiding all reminders of the event afterward.

How Does Therapy for PTSD Work?

Ultimately, healing from trauma means integrating the experience into your life. What does that mean? It means the trauma, or anything that reminds you of it, cannot feel like it is sneaking up on you or like something you have to avoid at all costs. It might also mean you have to get to a place where you feel significantly less shame about it.

Since PTSD became an official diagnosis in the 1980s, many innovative and effective treatments have been developed. If you have not already, I highly recommend reading Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score. It reads more like a novel than a textbook, and I am sure it is one of the main reasons trauma treatment has become so widespread since its publication in 2014.

In my work, I use an evidence-based treatment called Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT). Rather than focusing on every detail of the traumatic event itself, CPT helps you explore the meaning you made of the event. Traumatic memories have been compared to a cluttered cabinet with objects tossed in randomly so the door will not close, and things keep falling out unexpectedly. CPT helps you organize those memories, make sense of them, and understand how the trauma has impacted your beliefs and your life. This process allows you to organize the cabinet and close the door more easily when reminders inevitably comes back up.

Theoretically, what happens in this approach is that the prefrontal cortex, the planning and assessing part of the brain, begins to come back online and dampen the response of the amygdala, the fast-reacting emotional part of the brain that causes you to go into fight or flight.

By working through your thoughts about the trauma, many of which you might not even realize you are having, and reducing avoidance of reminders, your symptoms often decrease significantly.