Effective psychotherapy requires a substantial degree of trust, which can only occur when the client-therapist relationship feels sufficiently safe to both parties. With victims of psychological trauma, achieving this sense of safety and trust can be a truly difficult barrier to productive therapeutic work. Let's look at some of the reasons for this. But, first - why do this? Because it is all but impossible to solve a problem you don't understand, and this problem must be solved. That this is possible is verified by the thousands of people who have actually done it, each in their own manner, but all in the same general sorts of ways. It is important to see a path to the mountain top, if that is where you wish to be. Let's look at how and why that path can be hard to find.

Stress resilience is the ability to retain your sense of self and the form of your life in spite of being impacted by perceived threatening forces. All of us need adequate stress resilience and do well to cultivate this property in ourselves. You can do this before you recover from PTSD, and you certainly should after recovery. There are a number of fairly ordinary things you can do to increase your stress resilience, but to get the posttraumatic growth, you must actually do these things!