Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

At the Neurotherapy Center of Washington we treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with EEG Neurofeedback. Treatment plans may also include physiological biofeedback. Please review the information contained in the modalities section of this web site.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) may occur in persons who have been subject to traumatic events that are outside the range of usual human experience. The trauma may be physical or sexual abuse, accidents, or combat. The individual will often live in a state of extreme vigilance with much anxiety, disturbing nightmares, and social withdrawal. “Flashbacks” may occur. The flashbacks are usually some fragmented image from the traumatic experience, often triggered by some current situation that is similar in some way to the traumatic situation. Complete memories of the experience may be unavailable to the person. Theories as to why this suppression of the memories occur vary. One popular view holds that the memory is actively suppressed by the unconscious mind as a means of protecting the individual from overwhelming levels of anxiety that would occur if full recall were permitted. Another theory holds that the traumatic event or events induce a deeply altered state of consciousness that is so far from the normal state that it is inaccessible to the individual when awake.

The results of clinical experience with this therapy have been tremendously encouraging. People who have been suffering from PTSD for ten and twenty years are often completely relieved of their symptoms, becoming less anxious, less depressed, more comfortable, and more relaxed. As memory is regained, the traumatic incidents can be discussed with others, grieved over, and finally put aside as sad, but no longer terrifying or threatening memories. As this occurs the person can normalize his or her social and individual life and go about the business of living without the fear, anxiety, and depression that was previously a constant companion.

The graph below illustrates the progress one PTSD sufferer was able to make with 25 treatments at NCW.

Various outcome results of this study have been presented in 2009 and are published in three leading journals: