Body-Based “Bottom-Up” Psychotherapy for Military Sexual Trauma

As discussed in Chap. 7, the recommended treatments by the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for sexual trauma are cognitive modalities and repeated exposure treatments such as prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT). In addition, it has endorsed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) which involves using the body to guide the cognitive and exposure treatment in trauma. This treatment is discussed below. Further, the VA has recently acknowledged mindfulness as a “promising” addition to trauma treatment (cite). The act of mindfulness is varied for each treatment modality, but generally involves paying attention to the breath and body states that arise from a person’s thoughts.