Sort:  

Here is the Wikipedia definition of CPT:
Cognitive processing therapy (CPT) is a manualized therapy used by clinicians to help people recover from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and related conditions.[1] It includes elements of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatments. A typical 12-session run of CPT has proven effective in treating PTSD across a variety of populations, including combat veterans,[2][3][4] sexual assault victims,[5][6][7] and refugees.[8] CPT can be provided in individual and group treatment formats.
Basically, you sit down with a therapist, they give you worksheets on feelings and you're supposed to go home, write down a significant situation/feeling that arises, and why it might make you feel this way. You then write how you could respond to it differently. Then, you discuss it with said therapist, during the allotted time slot, (since they have fifty other vets to see that day), in hopes of re-training the brain to approach feeling/situation/emotion differently. I guess for me, it was too standardized, too formulaic. That's not how my mind works, ever worked. We also did an abbreviated form of this during my stay at Laurel Ridge, a psychiatric hospital with a military-specific wing in San Antonio. It's interesting that this is what the VA uses, yet, even when Veterans go through these "standardized" treatments and sensory-dulling medications, they still end up killing themselves or descending deeper into depression, isolation. I've had to talk more vets than I care to think about from taking that plunge down the dark abyss of suicide. Already lost one good friend to it. So, something isn't working. There's a break down in the system at the human level. Of course, this is just my own opinion.