Treating PTSD: A Compassion-Focused CBT Approach

by Shirley Porter

Treating PTSD presents a comprehensive, compassion-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) approach that provides therapists with the evidence-based information they need to understand trauma’s effects on the mind and body as well as the phases of healing. Chapters offer discussion, practical tools, and interventions that therapists can use with clients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to reduce feelings of distress and increase their sense of safety. Readers are introduced to the metaphor of "the valley of the shadow of death" to explain the experience of PTSD; they’re also shown how to identify the work they’ll need to do as therapists to accompany clients on their healing journey. Two new compassion-focused CBT interventions for trauma processing are also introduced.

222 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 23, 2018

About the author

Shirley Porter, MEd, is a Registered Psychotherapist and founder and Clinical Director of Shirley Porter and Associates Psychotherapy Clinic. Her experience includes more than thirty years as a psychotherapist working with adults suffering from depression, anxiety, stress, trauma, grief, relationship issues, and suicidality. Shirley is a former Adjunct Clinical Professor in the graduate Counselling Psychology program at Western University in London, Canada. She is author of two published books on trauma, as well as several research articles. She is also a contributing writer of mental health articles for Choosingtherapy.com,and has more than twenty years' experience as a clinical supervisor/consultant to other therapists.

Reviews

[Judy Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a guide to therapists aimed at improving their techniques when dealing with clients with PTSD. I chose it because I wanted to know more about how PTSD affects people so as to write more convincingly about a character in my detective novels who suffers from it.

This is the second time in recent years that I’ve been surprised to find a religious dimension in a completely secular book. I was particularly surprised that the publisher allowed her to include a subsection headed “Use of Prayer”. She uses the metaphor of “the valley of the shadow of death” to describe the feelings of someone who is experiencing PTSD and speaks of the therapist’s role as entering the valley with the client in order to assist them out of it and into the light.

Each chapter starts with a short quotation, usually from a distinguished psychologist. I was particularly struck by this one from Francis de Sales: “Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength.” I’ve now downloaded the Kindle edition of a compendium of his writing and added it to my “to-read” pile!

Another striking thing about the approach described in this book is this:

“ I will often … apologize to my clients for what they have been through.”

I’ve always found it strange when I prime minister, say, apologises for some atrocity committed by earlier generations. It has always seemed to me that it is mere virtue-signalling to apologise for something for which you are not personally responsible in any way. The author of this book cites the example of the reaction of First Nation people to the apology from the Canadian Prime minister in 2008 for the forcible removal of children from their families. Some of the survivors spoke of how important it was for them to receive the apology as acknowledgement that they should not have been put through the suffering that they were forced to endure.

Now that I’ve finished the book, I’m all the more struck by the author’s bravery in deciding to include religious elements in her suggestions for how to help PTSD sufferers. Having worked in the NHS, I know that health staff are discouraged from talking about faith for fear of being accused of proselytising. Staff have been disciplined for offering to pray with or for patients. I wonder whether it is different in Canada. I would never have expected to find a heading “Use of Prayer” in a therapy text book. Nor would I have expected to find a section, “Addressing Spiritual Injuries”. This latter section addresses the additional distress that people may feel if they believe that there is a God who is in control of the world. They may struggle with conflicting thoughts about how God could allow them to be so hurt and feelings of guilt for thinking such things. Other members of their faith community may make things worse for them by suggesting that their trauma is all part of god’s plan for them, or that may just be part of their own belief system.
In an appendix, the author provides a sample letter from therapist to client at the end of therapy. Its final sentence sums up the philosophy of the author’s approach to counselling: “Remember, too, that you are not alone. You are cared for. You are “good enough” exactly as you are. Rest in this truth.”