Malik Hassan

About

The idea I would most like to dispel is that treatment means reliving everything. That belief is the single most common reason people give me for having waited years, and it describes a version of this work that competent practitioners have largely abandoned. Reliving is not the mechanism. PTSD treatment works by changing how the memory is stored and how you respond to reminders of it, and a lot of that can be achieved without a detailed retelling of events. Some approaches involve talking through what happened and others barely do at all. We would choose based on what suits you rather than on what I happen to prefer. I arrived here by way of nonprofit and social-work adjacent roles, where I met a great many people who had heard that therapy meant reliving it and had sensibly decided against. They were declining something that was never on offer. If that is why you waited, it is worth another look.