On the importance of re-living

I was encouraged to read this article in the mainstream media:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529178/Making-rape-victims-relieve-assault-help-psychologist-says-four-five-abused-teenagers-no-longer-PTSD-exposure-therapy.html

The Daily Mail reports that Edna Foa from the University of Pennsylvania has conducted a study revealing that 83% of rape victims no longer had PTSD systems after 'exposure' therapy.

The study found that facilitating rape victims to relive their experiences helped them to heal. Further, Foa et al. found that 53% of those who received supportive counselling no longer had PTSD after treatment.

I find this hugely validating as it mirrors my experience with regression therapy. I have found that my PTSD symptoms have reduced significantly through the repeated reliving of my childhood trauma and most importantly, my birth experience. This reliving was facilitated firstly by the gifted therapist Andina Seers of the Coming to Life Project and latterly by The Primal Center's cutting-edge practices in Santa Monica.

"'It's common to think that offering just comforting words and encouraging traumatised youngsters to forget their ordeals is protecting them, but that's 'not doing them any favours,'" says Foa.

Her statement encapsulates the ethos of all regression approaches. This philosophy is now something that I believe in whole-heartedly. Any form of counselling that does not help counselees to relive their pain may be well-intentioned. However, therapists who work in this way will never be as effective as those who help people to grieve deeply, however much that means 'going back over old ground'. I hope that it's only a matter of time before this view becomes more prevalent within therapeutic circles and society more widely.

It's also encouraging that the study reports that the 'benefits of the prolonged exposure therapy lasted throughout a one-year follow-up.' Again, that's been my experience with regression therapy in general and Primal Therapy especially. I have found the benefits to be permanent. My regression therapy practice has been like ascending a slope of improved mental health as a jolty funicular railway carriage. Sometimes I may temporarily run of stream, but I never fall back down the hill by much more than a few feet. 

Funicular Railway, Bridgnorth, Shropshire