Is there good news with trauma?
Actually, yes.
The largest meta-analysis to date on trauma recovery (looking at data from over 11,000 relevant medical studies) suggests that the best long term recovery after trauma is simply talking about it, no medication required.
Published in JAMA Psychiatry on June 12, 2019, reasearchers looked at direct comparisons between talk therapy (psychotherapy) and drug therapy (pharmacological treatments) in patients with PTSD.
- They found that in the long term, talk therapy helped more, being slightly superior to drug therapy both immediately following treatment and in long term follow up.
- The studies they looked at ranged from 2 months to 6 months long, and this meta-analysis showed there was no advantage to using drugs in recovering from PTSD.
- This means that drugs are now no longer recommended for first line treatment of trauma, as there is no indication that they are beneficial.
What does this mean?
While I am certainly not against the use of medications when they are needed, they should be used sparingly and either short term (as they do not show any long term advantage) or only for patients who don’t find improvement after talk therapy alone.
Be encouraged by this.
This means that the vast majority of folks can be helped — and helped best — by talking about trauma instead of medicating it away.
Connect with others.
Reach out for help.
Don’t feel like you are going crazy and don’t feel like you must go it alone.
We all have trauma, we all do. And we can lean on each other and get through it.
There is long term benefit from connecting to others and speaking about it. Treatment is not relegated to a psychiatrist’s office nor does it need to be prescribed away.
In fact, as I blogged about here, PTSD can actually be significantly helped by something as simple and as accessible as repeating a mantra. It’s true.
Here are some other blog posts I’ve written on trauma recovery for you:
- Trauma Changes The Health Of Your Body, But It’s Reversible
- Trauma Increases Headache Risk 4-Fold
- Childhood Trauma Increases Risk Of Self Harm. Here’s Help.
- OCD May Stem From Birth Trauma
- Going From Surviving To Thriving After Cancer
- Your 2019 Healing Mantra
- Is Your Job Driving You Crazy? You Are Not Alone. Here’s Help.
- Resolving PTSD, OCD, Tobacco and Drug Addiction Too
- Emotional Stress Directly Predicts Heart Attack… 10 Ways To Prevent It
- Letting Go Helps You Heal (Here’s How)
- Is Stress Is Making Your Antidepressant Ineffective?
- The Healing Power Of Grounded Touch
- A Super Interesting Difference Between Men and Women When Under Stress
- Another Difference Between Men and Women… Found On Autopsy
- The Healing Process Of Grief
Want more advice on how to naturally heal from stress and trauma?
The medical literature is clear… just communicating about trauma is every bit as healing (or even more healing) than all the best medications we have to treat trauma.
Simply joining a class, talking to a therapist, or connecting with others to heal can be just what you need to feel better than you have ever felt.
Did you know that folks who move through trauma can actually be healthier than folks who never went through any trauma at all?
It’s incredible to believe that trauma can actually strengthen your health but it is true.
In my Trauma Resilency & Recovery Class I go over the medical literature that proves that trauma is actually adaptive and empowering, and show you all the tools to use trauma to boost your own health in ways you never could have imagined possible.
Today my trauma healing class started, and I would love to have you join in.
It’s not too late.
Just click here to start getting the class emails directly into your inbox.
I developed this class based on my extensive research into the best of what the medical literature has proven to us about how to release trauma once and for all and become healthier for it.
No matter what you have gone through, you absolutely do have the ability to rebound from from it and create a new normal and a new health set point.
Everybody does.
Your body naturally want’s to trend back to full and complete wellness… mind, body and spirit.
I’ll give you the tools to get there and walk with you through it.
Join this course by clicking right here today. Today is the last day to sign up.
Moving onwards and upwards…
xoxoxo, Laura