How long does it take to heal PTSD?

Hey everybody, Brad Schipke here, and today I am going to definitively answer the question, how long does it take to heal trauma and PTSD? Now, this is one of the most common questions that I get, bar none. How long does it take? Is it even possible to heal PTSD? Is it going to take 6 months, a year? Will I ever heal? Well, there are 3 variables that really determine how long it takes you to heal. One of them is Completely outta your control, and then the other 2 are within your control. And once you know these variables, you get to really manipulate and control how fast you move through your recovery. Now, the, one of the reasons why most people do not heal is because they don't know these 3 variables here. So I'm going to walk you through what these are, give you actionable steps on how to actually control these and manipulate these variables to heal as fast as you possibly can. And at the end, I'm going to give you a simple equation. That will ensure that you heal in under a year, pretty much guaranteed, believe it or not. So let's dive right on in here. So this first variable here is the amount of raw unprocessed trauma. So this is the one variable that's completely outside of your control, right? Just the amount of raw unprocessed trauma that you've been through in your life. So the way I like to think of this is like a pressure gauge. So there's a limited amount of pressure that's built up in your system that needs to be released and processed and healed. So this, this varies person to person. So obviously somebody who's gone through one singular trauma is going to be able to heal quicker and process that trauma much faster than somebody who has, let's say, gone through a significant amount of traumas throughout their whole life or has been abused throughout their whole childhood. childhood, they would have more pressure in this gauge that would need to be released, more, more pressure, more trauma that would need to be healed. And again, I like to think of this as, as you go through life, you experience traumas. And one of the basic things about trauma is that when you experience it, it doesn't get correctly processed in your brain. So all of the information, all of the emotions, all of the beliefs, all the thoughts, all of that gets stored in your long-term memory. And the way that you actually go about healing that trauma by taking it out of the long-term memory, putting into your working memory and processing it. Now I'll go through how to actually do that and give you some resources to actually do that on your own. But just from a base fundamental basis, the first variable that determines how long it takes to heal is just the raw unprocessed trauma. Now we don't know exactly, we cannot quantitatively determine precisely how much unprocessed trauma is in your long-term memory. But what we do know is that there's a limited amount. There's a limited amount of trauma that you need to go through, that you need to process, that you need to heal in order to reach full recovery. Now that should bring a lot of hope. So we don't know exactly how much is in the long-term memory, but we do know there's a limited amount. So there's only so much that you need to go through before you reach full recovery. And that's an important thing to know because a lot of people feel like it's an endless amount, right? And only feels that way because of the second variable that we'll go through here. But there is a limited amount. And again, I like to think of it as a pressure gauge. A pressure gauge is not infinite in either direction. There's a limited amount. There's a certain amount that you need to release, that you need to process to get that trauma down to zero. And once you hit zero, you are at peace. The anxiety is gone. All of the symptoms are gone. So that's the first variable here is the amount of just raw, unprocessed trauma that you can't control. You don't know how much there is, but you do know that there is a limited amount, and that should give you insane amounts of hope. Insane amounts of hope. All right, so the second variable here really determines whether or not you're even going to be releasing this pressure in the right way. So if you, if you don't know what this second variable is and you don't know how to actually control it and manipulate it, then that pressure gauge will stay on full. And this is one of the mistakes that so many people make, so many professionals, so many therapists make this This mistake is by not utilizing the right tools. So the second variable is if you know the right— if you know the processing tools. So processing tools and how well you know them, right? So the second variable is if you know the processing tools, And how well you know them. So if you're not using processing tools, I'll step back. So processing tools are tools that actually identify the root of your trauma and fully process it versus the opposite of processing tools or the alternative is coping, coping tools, right? And this is what most people teach, right? So coping basically is, are things like breathing exercises, meditation, relaxation exercises, a lot of the things that You know, a lot of professionals teach and a lot of things that only profession—that's all they teach. But the thing about coping tools, although they're good and they have their—they have their place in the recovery journey, right? Because they help you gain control over your immediate symptoms. The thing about coping tools is that they're only dealing with the effect, right? So they're only bringing you back down to a baseline. They're not dealing with the root cause. The processing tools. deal with the root cause. And the way that I like to think of it is like a dam. So if you can't, if you couldn't tell, this is my attempt at drawing a dam, right? So let's say this right here is the water behind the dam, and then we have the dam right here. So again, the way that I like to think of coping tools versus processing tools is let's say you have some cracks in the dam, right? Right? So you have these cracks right here and there's water pouring out, right? So there's water just flowing out of the dam and it's just leaking and getting everywhere. If you were using coping tools, you'd be dealing with the effect of this problem. And instead of identifying where the hole is and patching up the hole, what you would do is you would take a bucket. Fill it up with water and put it behind the dam, right? So you're dealing with the effect of the problem, not the root cause. And that's the way that I like to think of this. Now, processing tools, on the other hand, would be like, okay, where is this leak coming from? Why is this leak happening? Why is this water coming through? And you identify the root cause, which isn't the water. The problem isn't the water. AKA the symptoms, right? So in this case, the water that's leaking out would be the symptoms. That's not the problem. The problem is that there's a dang— there's a damn hole in the dam. There's a damn hole in the dam. It's like, we got to fix the damn hole, the whole dam, the dam in the hole, the hole in the dam, the hole in the dam. We need to fix the hole in the dam. And that's what processing tools do is they ask, where is this symptom coming from? What's the root of this? What's the root of the trauma? And when you get get to the root of it and you fully process it, you are actually solving the problem instead of just dealing with the effects of the problem, right? And you can easily see that if you're just dealing with the effects, you're not really going to be making any impact on the amount of raw, unprocessed trauma that's stored in your long-term memory, because you're just going to be feeling the symptom, bringing back down to baseline, feeling the symptom, bringing it back down to baseline. You're not going to be dealing with the root and really working through that trauma. So first you need to know the tools to even make a dent on the raw unprocessed trauma. So you need to know the tools, but then the other variable within the variable, the sub-variable, is how well you know the tools, right? So let's again go back to this dam example or this visual where let's say you have 2 different type of— I'll just call them dam repairmen because I don't know what, you know, the person, the name of the person who would be fixing Fixing the dam. Let's say you have these 2 different repairmen that are coming to the job to fix these 2 different holes. Let's say one of them is an amateur and one of them has fixed a million dams in their life, right? One knows, knows the process of fixing the dam better than the other. So one is going to fix it faster and better and more thoroughly and will probably last longer, right? Their patch will last longer. So in that case, their skill level On repairing the dams determines how fast and efficient they are at solving that root problem. The same thing goes here with processing. So if you know the processing tools, the second variable that you can influence is again, how well do you know them? Have you mastered them? Do you know them at like top to bottom? Because the better you know them, the more efficient you'll be at processing and the faster you will be able to go through and heal. This raw unprocessed trauma. Right. All right. So that's the second variable here. Now, this third variable really is just throwing gasoline on the fire. So it's taking this second variable and just blowing it up and allowing yourself to move through recovery as fast as you possibly can. So this third variable is how much time You spend processing. So we know the first variable is how much raw trauma you're going through. The second variable is if you know the processing tools and how well you know them. So you know the tools, you know them well. What's the last thing you can do? Time. How much time do you actually spend processing? How much time do you actually spend utilizing these tools? Right? Because you can know the tools, but if you don't actually use the tools, and this might seem simple, but if you don't actually use the tools, you will not make any progress forward. And this actually, believe it or not, happens all the time in my recovery program where we give people the tools, we give them the processing tools, we help them master the tools, but then they don't, they don't spend the time. And it's time that is the most important variable because time actually influences the second variable as well. Because the more time that you spend processing will increase How well you know the tools, which will increase the efficiency at how, how fast you move through the on-process trauma. So these variables, these 2 variables here really influence each other and then act as a feedback loop to help you move through the process faster. So variables 2 and 3 here are the ones that are within your control, and you really want to maximize these as much as you possibly can. So you want to maximize The number of tools that you know, you need to know. And there's really only 4 tools that you need to know, and I'll go through what those are. But making sure you know all the tools, maximizing your mastery on those tools, and then maximizing the time that you actually spend processing. Right. So I want you to think about this too. So there's a lot of problems with the current therapeutic model out there. Right. But one of them, one of the big ones is Besides, you know, a lot of them don't actually use the right processing tools. The second problem is that you're only spending 50 minutes per week, right? And a lot of times with, with a therapy session, you know, you show up, you chit-chat, you're like, oh, how was your week? You know, my week was good. You know, things are whatever. My week was absolutely terrible. But you chit-chat in the beginning on the front end of the session and on the back end. So you're really, you're really only getting, let's say, 30 minutes Of actual— if you're using— if you have the right therapist and the therapist is using the right tool, you're really only getting about 30 minutes of actual processing time. And that processing time is scattered and unfocused because you're only doing it in a 30-minute session once per week, right? And this is the baseline. Obviously, you could be doing more or less dependent on your situation, whether you have access to therapy, whatever. But The current therapeutic model, let's say you max it out and everything's perfect and you're perfectly efficient and you're using the right tools. You're getting 50 minutes per week. So just under an hour right now over the course of a year, that's less, that's like whatever, around 50 hours of work. And again, it's scattered, it's unfocused. So you're not going to be making the progress that you should be making. And just to be perfectly honest and blunt about this, When it comes to PTSD and CPTSD, it takes more than that. It's— this is a pretty significant problem, which I think if you have this, you understand that this is a pretty significant problem. And one of the reasons why people don't heal is they're just not putting in enough time. So you need to be able to be brutally honest with yourself and be like, and ask yourself, how much time am I actually putting in? One, I mean, there's 2 variables underneath time. It's like, how much time am I putting in to actually learn the processing tools? And master them, and then how much time am I actually using, spending, processing, using those tools? If you if you are honest with yourself, like you you need to be honest with yourself, and this is this is a reality that most you know trauma survivors do not want to come to terms with because I mean I I did this I had to do this myself too. I had to be honest. I'd be like Brad, like you're not really putting in any time at all. It's like this is a huge problem in your life. It's You can't go to work. You can't function. It's ruining your relationships. It's ruining your self-worth. It's like, it's like this problem, this problem with PTSD is significant enough to put in a lot of time, but you're not putting in a lot of time. And I had to be honest. I was like, man, I'm putting in like maybe an hour per week, you know? And again, to be blunt, it's like, that's not enough. It's like, you won't heal like on an hour per week. I mean, the rate that it would take to actually go through all the unprocessed trauma, it's like, Crazy. You know, and that's assuming you're using the right tools in the most efficient way. But here comes, here comes the kicker, right? So how long, again, to answer, cause I told you I was going to answer this question, right? How long does it take to heal? I'm going to give you an actual answer with this equation right here. And this is, this is what we encourage all of our members in our recovery program to do as well, is to do Let me write it down here. 1 hour per day consistently. So to get consistent and just do 1 hour of processing each day, if you can build it into a routine, what we call a healing routine, just 1 hour per day, right? Which if you think about it again with the therapeutic model, it's like 1 hour per day, you're doing over 7x what you would do with therapy. So just with that variable alone, if you're doing 7x the work, You're going to heal that much faster and you're going to learn the tools that much faster as well. But 1 hour per day equals 365 hours per year, 365 hours per year. Again, that's like 7, that's 7x, more than 7x of what you would get in traditional therapy. Now, what I've realized with working with thousands of people at at this point is that it takes— and getting feedback from all these people is that for most people it takes between— and this is to fully recover from PTSD— it takes a combined total of between 50 and 300 hours of deep processing work when you are utilizing the right tools and you know them well. And you know them well. So between 50 and 300 hours. That has been around the sweet spot for when most people have been able to heal, fully heal their PTSD or CPTSD. Obviously it's range, and obviously it's dependent on how much each individual person has this. It's dependent on how much raw, unprocessed trauma somebody has in their long-term memory, right? And we can't pin this down. So I can't definitively tell anybody, okay, it's going to take 100 hours, it's going to take 200 hours of processing. But like I said earlier, there's a limited amount. There's a limited amount of raw, unprocessed trauma that you need to go through in order to fully heal, eliminate these symptoms for good, for good. There's a limited amount of hours you need to put in. And what I'm telling you is that from my experience with myself and working with other people, and these, and this, this is a wide range of people as well, between 50 And 300 hours. Now, if you knew that, if you knew that it takes on average between 50 and 300 hours, how quickly would you put in that time? So if that would solve all of your problems, if that would solve your anxiety, flashbacks, nightmares, angry lashouts at loved ones, how fast would you put in that 300 hours? Would you be committed to it? Would you put in at least 1 hour per day? Would you put in 2? Would you put in 3? Would you put in 4? We had a client who was putting 10 hours per day and in one month put in over 300 hours, one month put in over 300 hours and fully healed his CPTSD that he had since he was a child and all of the trauma and all of the trauma that he had when he was a wartime military veteran. And he was in his 40s and he had been dealing with this for literally decades. And in one month, just grinding it out. And he is, he is an exception. You do not need to put in 10 hours per day, but he is, he's an exception to what most people do. He's an outlier, but he also proves what is actually possible because at the end of the day, these are the variables that matter. Do you know the tools? How well do you know them? And how much time are you putting in? And you can put that time in, you can put in 1 hour per year. Some people do, and let's say it takes 100 hours for you to heal, and that's how much time it takes to process your individual unprocessed trauma. Say it's 100 hours. If you're going at the rate of one hour per per year, it's going to take you 100 years. So you're going to die before you reach full recovery. And this and like that's why you need to be honest about how much time you're putting in because a lot of people do die before they reach full recovery. And that's just like that's just reality. So this this equation down here is one hour per day, and and this is the baseline. Just If you could just be consistent, 1 hour per day, you wake up, you do some recovery work, whether it's learning, learning the processing tools or actually implementing the processing tools, 1 hour per day, 1 hour per day. The average American spends hours, literal hours on their phone. Like just look at your screen time. If you're like, oh, I don't have any time, look at the screen time on your phone. I just found you some time. So 1 hour per day. And how much, how important is this problem? To solve this problem. If you could just put in 1 hour per day, obviously I can't guarantee anything because I don't know you, if you're using the right tools or anything like this, but I can basically guarantee that after 1 year you're going to be getting over 365 hours per year and that will equal full recovery. So full recovery, just an hour per day. That's, that's what I want everybody to do. It's just 1 hour per day. In one year, your life will completely change. Just commit to that for yourself, for your family. If you enjoyed this video, hit subscribe. If you want to learn more of these processing tools, check out this video right here. I'll see you in the next one.