Why Choose an Evidence Based Trauma Treatment?
Originally published: May 28, 2024 • Updated: August 2026
Here’s the Gist
Not all therapy is equally effective at treating trauma. Being a good therapist and being trained to actually treat PTSD are two different things.
Evidence-based means we're using treatments that have been studied, tested, and shown to work, not just doing what sounds helpful.
Treatments like CPT and PE give us an actual plan. We know what we're targeting, why we're targeting it, and whether it's getting better.
You can absolutely understand your trauma and still be stuck. Insight matters, but sometimes you need treatment specifically designed to change what's keeping PTSD going.
I want you to get better and graduate from therapy. Evidence-based trauma treatment is designed with that goal in mind.
What Does "Evidence-Based" Actually Mean?
"Evidence-based" gets thrown around a lot in mental health, so let's make it less complicated. It means the treatment has actually been studied. Researchers have tested it with people who have the problem we're trying to treat, compared outcomes, and found that the treatment reliably helps people get better.
That matters because being helpful and treating PTSD aren't necessarily the same thing. You can have a therapist you really like. You can have meaningful conversations. You can understand exactly why you do what you do. All of those things can be valuable.
And you can still have PTSD.
Evidence-based trauma treatments like Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) were specifically developed to target the things that keep trauma symptoms going. That's the difference.
So What Are We Actually Doing in Trauma Therapy?
Different evidence-based trauma treatments get at PTSD in different ways. Some focus more heavily on what you've come to believe because of the trauma. Others focus more directly on memories and the things you've started avoiding. There isn't one magic technique we're hiding from you. The goal is to figure out what's keeping you stuck use a treatment designed to change it.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT)
CPT is a type of cognitive-behavioral therapy specifically designed for trauma. It helps individuals challenge and modify unhelpful beliefs related to trauma. CPT works by:
Restructuring Thoughts: What happened will always be what happened. What you say to yourself about what happened, that’s where we start to take a closer look. Your brain tries to do the best it can to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense and in doing that there can be some pretty important pieces that get overlooked or not included. CPT helps to broaden the lens you see trauma through to make sure all of the important parts are being incorporated.
Developing Understanding: CPT does not look for a “positive” outcome or a glass-half full take-away from trauma. Trauma is bad, it will always be bad, however how you understand trauma can radically change how you see yourself, other people and the world.
Prolonged Exposure (PE)
Prolonged Exposure is another form of cognitive-behavioral therapy specifically designed to help individuals confront and process trauma-related memories and situations. Here's how PE can benefit those with trauma:
Revisiting Trauma: PE involves repeatedly revisiting the traumatic memory in a safe, therapeutic setting to reduce its emotional power over time. Revisiting helps for many different reasons. First it helps to take the emotional intensity out of the memory. If you watched a scary movie 6 times in a row, you wouldn’t jump at the same place each time. In fact, by the fourth time you were watching the movie you might be bored or disinterested. That is exactly what revisiting helps to accomplish. Revisiting also helps to organize the memory. As I talked about in How PTSD gets in the way of Recovery, trauma tends to get logged away in the brain in a disorganized fashion. Finally, we know that avoidance plays a big part in PTSD. Sometimes people have thoughts like “I won’t be able to do it” or “if I start thinking about it it will get worse.” Revisiting the memory provides an opportunity to experience the exact opposite, it builds confidence and competence. You can do hard things and it would be such a trick of your brain to make you think that thinking about the memory is worse than the experience of trauma!
In Vivo Exposure: This technique gradually exposes you to trauma-related stimuli or situations that you have been avoiding, helping to decrease fear and avoidance behaviors. Trauma tends to make the world people live in very small. You might notice you’ve stopped doing things that you previously enjoyed (ex. going to restaurants, going to the park with your kids, going to concerts, looking yourself in the eye, or driving). PE helps you to re-engage in those activities that are important to you.
Processing: Through repeated exposure, PE helps your brain process and integrate traumatic memories, reducing their ability to cause distress and enabling you to regain a sense of control.
Why I Choose Evidence-Based Treatment
Here's my bias as a therapist: if we have treatments that have repeatedly been shown to help people with PTSD, I think you deserve access to them. That doesn't mean research gets to make every decision for us. You're still a person sitting across from me, not a diagnosis or a research participant. But I also don't want to spend six months doing something because it feels therapeutic without ever asking whether your symptoms are actually changing.
Evidence-based treatments give us a roadmap and a way to measure whether what we're doing is working. They're also designed to be time-limited. That's important to me. My goal isn't for you to become really good at therapy. My goal is for you to learn what you need, work through what's keeping you stuck, and eventually not need therapy anymore. If we're doing our jobs well, you should graduate.
You Don't Have to Know Which Treatment You Need
You do not need to research CPT, PE, and NET for six hours and show up to a consultation already knowing which one you want. That's part of my job. We'll talk generally about what happened, what's bothering you now, what you've already tried, and what you want to be different. Then I'll explain the options I think make sense and why. You get to ask questions. You get to have preferences. And we'll make the decision together. What I care about is that whichever treatment we choose has a reason behind it. You deserve more than "let's keep talking and see what happens."
FAQs About Evidence-Based Trauma Therapy
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Basically, it means I'm not just doing something because I like it or because it sounds like it should work. The treatment has been studied with people experiencing trauma or PTSD, and we have research showing that it actually helps.
Research doesn't replace clinical judgment or the relationship between you and your therapist. It gives us a much better starting point than guessing.
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No. Structured and robotic are not the same thing. I can follow an evidence-based treatment and still laugh with you, swear, answer your questions, talk about something important that happened this week, and generally act like a human being.
The structure keeps me accountable to where we're going. It doesn't require you to act like a research subject.
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I primarily use Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE), and Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). They approach trauma differently, which is useful because not every person gets stuck in exactly the same way.
You don't need to choose one before we meet. We'll figure out which approach makes the most sense based on what's going on with you.
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Nope. Some treatments use worksheets or written exercises because they're useful tools, not because I'm trying to recreate high school.
And if I'm asking you to do something, you should know why you're doing it and how it's supposed to help. I'm not interested in assigning busywork.
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One of the things I really like about evidence-based trauma treatment is that we're not planning for you to be in therapy forever. These treatments are designed as episodes of care with specific goals.
The exact timeline varies, but the goal is pretty simple: get you better and get you back to living your life.
If you've already spent a lot of time understanding your trauma but you're still dealing with the same symptoms, it might be time to try treatment that's specifically designed to change them.
I specialize in evidence-based trauma therapy for men. Schedule a free consultation call and we'll talk about what's going on, what you've already tried, and what treatment might actually make sense for you.
Explore related topics:
| Trauma & PTSD | Trauma Therapy | Stress & Anxiety | Guilt & Shame |Life Transitions | Relationships & Connection |
About the Author
Brittany Shannon, Ph.D., is a trauma therapist for men with more than 10 years of experience. She trained in the VA system, working with veterans at both outpatient and residential levels of care, and brings that expertise into her private practice today. Based in Kentucky, Dr. Shannon offers virtual therapy across all 43 PSYPACT states, specializing in trauma recovery, PTSD treatment, and men’s mental health. Her work focuses on helping men heal from painful experiences, break free from survival mode, and move forward with clarity and confidence.
You don’t have to keep pushing through this on your own.
