for addressing traumatic stress?
Up until recently, there have been two main approaches to PTSD: Coping techniques. Cathartic techniques Some therapists give their clients specific in vivo methods for counteracting or coping with the symptoms of PTSD. These clients learn to adapt to, to live with, their PTSD condition. They learn, for instance, how to avoid situations that trigger them, how to distract themselves when they are triggered, how to rebreathe in a paper bag to avoid hyperventilation. Women who have been assaulted or raped may take self-defense classes. Others encourage their clients to “release their feelings”, to have a catharsis. The idea is that past traumas generate a certain amount of negative energy or “emotional charge'”, and the therapist’s task is to work with the client to release this charge so that it does not manifest itself as aberrant behavior, negative feelings and attitudes, or psychosomatic conditions. This notion, derived from Freud’s libido theory, is an “hydraulic” theory of psychopath
