Making raped teens relive trauma works, study says

I'm a rape victim, and if someone tries to make me "relive" that, they will regret it!

This article really needs a better title. It is too alarming until one reads the actual content.

This is far from a cure for PTSD! At best it is providing temporary relief for some PTSD symptoms, so that the patient no longer meets the diagnostic criteria for full-blown PTSD. The desensitization is simply psychological behavioural deconditioning so that a particular trigger is deactivated. What's missing is the awareness on the part of therapists that to truly heal PTSD the survivor must bring the dissociated sensory inputs of sensations (sight, smell, sounds, tactile impressions) and of feelings (emotions) and of thoughts (identity) that are missing from the recall of the event into awareness, where these fragments can be consciously processed. Only then can the event be fully experienced and abreacted to, after which it becomes a memory that fades with time. Only then can the mind know that the emergency is over and turn off the chronic fight or flight response that is a hallmark of PTSD. Also missing is any awareness on the part of these therapists that the trauma being "relived" is often just the latest of a string of traumas going back to early childhood or birth, the dissociated elements of which must all be consciously processed and understood to heal. This knowledge has been with the human race for millennia, it's our so called modern medicine that has lost it.

. It is too alarming until one reads the actual content.

I agree. I really wondered during 5 seconds if the poor girls were not getting assaulted again.

Knew those dramatic re-enactments have a purpose!