How Long Does Therapy Take for Childhood Trauma?

Answers and Resources on the Processing of Childhood Trauma

While there are many types of trauma you might have experienced as a child, the result could still be the same. You might experience harmful behaviors and have difficulty forming healthy relationships with the people in your life. How long does therapy take for childhood trauma once you commit to healing?

A licensed therapist can treat childhood trauma in a variety of ways, with many people seeing the first inkling of the healing process in three to four sessions. Most forms of trauma therapy require less than four months to complete, but the work you do may be lifelong. Supports are crucial to maintain gains.

Purpose Healing Center offers one-on-one and group therapy sessions with a licensed healthcare provider who can help with your specific type of trauma. Whether you struggle with flashbacks or intrusive thoughts, we can help.

Keep reading to learn more about how long trauma therapy takes based on the treatment modality your clinician offers at Purpose Healing Center.

How Long Trauma Therapy Takes: Treatment Methods to Consider

Coping with childhood trauma and starting the healing process is a major turning point for most. From sexual abuse to witnessing violence, all trauma can keep you from living life to the fullest. Don’t allow childhood traumas to continue holding you back as you’re mired in unhealthy coping mechanisms.

How long do trauma-informed approaches and care take for you to see a major difference in a PTSD diagnosis?

It depends on which type of therapy you enroll in. Our clinicians at Purpose Healing Center are trained in lots of treatment modalities so that we can find the right approach to better a person’s life with the most effective treatment.

Here is a look at a few ways that you can process past traumatic experiences.

Cognitive Processing Therapy for Short-Term Treatment

When you exhibit the hallmark symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and need quick release, the best fit might be cognitive processing therapy. This is a highly structured approach to dealing with the intense emotions surrounding early experiences of trauma.

The model is loosely based on cognitive behavior therapy, in which you evaluate thoughts and feelings. After the therapy process, you should be able to determine how they impact your actions and start to reframe automatic thoughts and knee-jerk reactions related to adverse childhood experiences.

Keep in mind that cognitive processing therapy can be quite intense. Your therapist will ask you to write down your memories of traumatic events before sharing them aloud. There are no places in the therapy room where you can hide from the memories. This intense process usually takes about twelve sessions and the results can be maintained long-term with maintenance treatments.

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Another approach to trauma therapy designed to improve mental health in a shorter timeframe is AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy). It takes a little longer to achieve the same effects, but it’s still a rapid treatment protocol.

AEDP is a more relational way of treating trauma compared to cognitive processing therapy. Instead of turning to CBT for a framework, your counselor will work with you to build rapport and establish more meaningful connections before processing complex trauma. As you work through the healing process, you’ll feel less alone in what can often be an isolating experience.

Only once you have a therapeutic relationship with your clinician can you start to discuss what you have lived through. Trauma treatment requires structure and a supportive environment, and AEDP delivers.

According to research, clients who had sixteen sessions of AEDP had more positive outcomes six and twelve months later, proving that the gains are long-lasting.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy for Trauma and Beyond

How long does trauma therapy take to see gains in your mental health? It may be easier than you think to get your brain to reprocess the memories that haunt you from childhood. Therapists trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR) can guide you and help you to get unstuck.

While you discuss or think about your trauma, they will guide you through exercises that involve the movement of the eyes or through tapping. The dual attention to bilateral stimulation and trauma therapy allows your brain to recategorize its experience and integrate it into your memories in a healthier way.

After EMDR, these memories typically hold less power. Research has shown that it tends to be faster and more effective than trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). Not to mention, it can show results in just a few sessions. This study evaluated clients after eight sessions.

Prolonged Exposure Therapy to Confront Trauma Head-On

Oftentimes, people wonder why it’s so hard to move beyond a traumatic event. The answer is complex but could be rooted in a simple coping mechanism: avoidance. A trauma therapist has to establish a reliable relationship with you to increase your felt safety and help you open up.

Prolonged exposure therapy makes it impossible for clients to dodge the elephant in the room.

Instead of trying to push past the trauma and learn new coping skills, these trauma therapy techniques are designed to force you to contend with your lived experiences. As you face the traumatic event, you will see that there is no danger in thinking about it. It may feel risky, but your therapist can teach you how to handle the emotions that arise.

The sessions of prolonged exposure therapy are a little longer than the typical one-hour slots therapists tend to allot. Studies have shown that they should be ninety minutes to two hours with eight to fifteen sessions before graduation.

Narrative Exposure Therapy for Improved Mental Health Conditions

Trauma affects everyday life in a myriad of ways, which is why it’s so crucial to start trauma therapy as you prepare to take the first steps toward the recovery process. Sometimes, you can start the healing journey with narrative exposure therapy in a group setting. This is helpful if you want a sounding board of your peers as you process chronic trauma.

However, you can also talk about your traumatic experiences solo.

In NET, you will tell the story of your multiple traumas chronologically. It provides more context for the things you have experienced–both positive and negative. You’ll be able to have a more cohesive story that redefines your trauma and allows you to better understand it.

Four to twelve sessions of talk therapy are recommended for NET.

Internal Family Systems Therapy for Integration

If you have been seeking trauma therapy and found that the above experiences aren’t the right fit, you may want to consider internal family systems therapy. This isn’t the same as working within the context of family therapy. Instead, you’re allowing the various parts of your “self” to come forward and work to integrate them into the whole.

Each part of yourself that is affected by the traumatic memories should be given an outlet to speak about how you feel. The therapy room is a safe place for the different versions of yourself to come forward. For example, you may have yourself at a young age as well as in adulthood.

The traumatic experience can be lived through the lens of all of your various selves, eventually silencing the parts and integrating into the whole. It pulls from mindfulness exercises, self-acceptance, and more for a truly comprehensive approach to the healing process.

Expect at least four sessions to get your parts to speak up and start to develop coping strategies.

Art Therapy for a Creative Outlet

What do you do when trauma triggers arise in your day-to-day life? Having productive coping skills is an important component of long-term therapy, but there are alternative therapies that can assist. Art is one skill that can help you process and express yourself more freely.

Many people love art therapy because it’s a more passive way to approach their own trauma. A good art therapist who understands the process can give prompts, offer feedback, and help you reconstruct the narrative of your story. Plus, they can give homework that carries those skills back to your daily life.

Art therapy can help you cope with trauma triggers and express yourself to those closest to you. The result is a strong support system when individuals process their feelings. It’s designed to be a tangible, short-term therapy with long-term benefits.

Studies show that ten sessions (administered weekly) are enough for this evidence-based treatment.

Accelerated Resolution Therapy for Quick Wins

If you struggle to develop coping strategies that put your past into perspective, it might be time to think about gaining quick wins with Accelerated Resolution Therapy. The goal is to replace the mental images of your trauma triggers with more positive imagery, thus reducing flashbacks and nightmares.

Like EMDR, it utilizes bilateral stimulation via eye movement back and forth to help reprocess a negative image and experiences holding you back. ART also emphasizes guided imagery, which can be helpful in the times between your appointments, as well as traditional talk therapy.

ART combines the best parts of many long-term therapies for an ultra-effective approach.

The benefit is that ART can help in extremely short windows of time. Among veterans who participated in Accelerated Resolution Therapy, they averaged about three to four sessions before seeing the major impact they needed. This can be a quick way to provide relief until other forms of long-term therapy for PTSD have an opportunity to work.

Healing from Childhood Trauma at Purpose Healing Center

As you can see, there are no cookie-cutter approaches to dealing with complex trauma or even a PTSD diagnosis.

Regardless of the type of trauma, we weigh which therapies are going to be the most helpful and effective specifically for you. We offer inpatient mental health and outpatient services in our safe and supportive environment, conveniently located in Scottsdale and Phoenix.

Don’t waste another day being held back by the adverse experiences of your childhood trauma.

Our admissions team can talk you through admission and verify your insurance benefits in a quick phone call. Reach out to us today to begin the healing process!

 

Resources

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2. Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., Fosha, D., Thoma, N. C., Gretton, H., Joseph, A. J., & Nakamura, K. (2022). The long-term outcome of accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy: 6- and 12-month follow-up results. Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.), 59(3), 431–446.
3. Shapiro F. (2014). The role of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy in medicine: addressing the psychological and physical symptoms stemming from adverse life experiences. The Permanente journal, 18(1), 71–77.
4. Eftekhari, A., Stines, L. R., & Zoellner, L. A. (2006). Do You Need To Talk About It? Prolonged Exposure for the Treatment of Chronic PTSD. The behavior analyst today, 7(1), 70–83.
5. Schwartz R. C. (2013). Moving from acceptance toward transformation with Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS). Journal of clinical psychology, 69(8), 805–816.
6. Lely, J. C. G., Smid, G. E., Jongedijk, R. A., W Knipscheer, J., & Kleber, R. J. (2019). The effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy: a review, meta-analysis and meta-regression analysis. European journal of psychotraumatology, 10(1), 1550344.
7. Heijman, J., Wouters, H., Schouten, K. A., & Haeyen, S. (2024). Effectiveness of trauma-focused art therapy (TFAT) for psychological trauma: study protocol of a multiple-baseline single-case experimental design. BMJ open, 14(1), e081917.
8. Pang, T., Murn, L., Williams, D., Lawental, M., Abhayakumar, A., & Kip, K. E. (2023). Comparison of Accelerated Resolution Therapy for PTSD Between Veterans With and Without Prior PTSD Treatment. Military medicine, 188(3-4), e621–e629.