EMDR Therapy

Trauma is an injury to the nervous system, and like a broken bone, it is not something we can just think or talk our way out of.

Maybe you’ve been numbing the pain, but it’s numbing your joy as well. Maybe you’ve been living your life in survival mode, but deep down you long to feel fully alive again. Perhaps you’ve tried talk therapy, but you still feel stuck.

Your trauma is an injury, not a life sentence. By tending to both the physical and emotional imprint of your trauma, not only can you heal your nervous system, you can unlock the power within you to create a life using your own powerful voice.

When we experience a traumatic or painful event, these memories are sometimes misplaced in our bodies. Much like a computer misfiling a document, our brains can do the same thing with painful experiences. This can lead to things like:

Numbness
Dissociation or depersonalization
Panic attacks
Acute anxiety, especially when reminded of the memory
Sleep challenges
Physical symptoms such as GI issues, skin rashes, or locking jaw
Withdrawing from loved ones
And many other physical and psychological symptoms

Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy can help your brain “re-file” difficult memories, ultimately decreasing the symptoms associated with them and helping you restore a sense of balance, presence, and stability in your day-to-day life.

EMDR is the gold standard for reprocessing the triggers, cues, or memories that are causing you distress.

EMDR is a trauma modality utilizing bilateral stimulation (BLS) such as eye movements or light tapping on the hands, to bridge both sides of the brain in order to “reprocess” painful memories. It was developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro as she found bilateral eye movements, similar to our eye movements during REM sleep, helped her to cope with the challenges of her own breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Trauma is stored in your body, not just in your mind. With EMDR, you can go beyond the limits of traditional talk therapy and your thoughts alone, incorporating the body aspects of trauma while with the emotional self and the negative core beliefs (such as “Nothing I ever do is enough” or “I am not safe”) that often accompany these difficult experiences.

By working directly with the nervous system to desensitize the reactivity in your body to the trauma source, you can rely less on unhealthy coping mechanisms, improve emotional stability, and increase your sense of self-compassion and self-love.

It’s possible to make peace with the past and become present in life again.

Frequently asked questions about EMDR Therapy:

What concerns can EMDR treat?

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
Depression
Anxiety
Chronic Pain
Panic attacks
Assaults
Sexual, emotional, or physical abuse
Auto accidents
Childhood neglect
Sleep
Neglect and attachment wound

What is trauma, anyway?

I often hear from clients who don’t consider their experiences to be painful or significant enough to “qualify” as trauma. I want to assure you that there is no measuring stick for trauma. It is simply a situation that leaves you with psychological, physical, or relational impacts that feel like more than you can handle.

When you become overwhelmed in this way, your brain and body struggle to appropriately digest the event, process it, and properly file it away. Often, your brain will go even further, determining what the event(s) say about you as a person. This can lead to negative core beliefs that spoil your quality of life and sense of wellbeing.

How does EMDR work?

EMDR directly addresses both the trauma source—how your amygdala and nervous system identify and react to the source (think fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop)—and the cognitions and beliefs you associate with that trauma source.

It’s important to understand that EMDR is more than just eye movements. It involves preparation and assessment to ensure you are well-equipped to manage any discomfort that comes up and integrate the healing into your day-to-day life. EMDR has 8 phases, and I will guide you through each one, spending as much time as necessary before moving to the next one:

Phase I – History & Treatment Planning: Discussing your history and developing a treatment plan with attention to traumatic events to reprocess. Assessing your internal and external resources.
Phase II – Preparation: Establishing a therapeutic alliance. Explaining EMDR therapy process and setting expectations. Addressing your concerns and questions. Preparing you with specific techniques to cope with emotional disturbance that may arise.
Phase III – Assessment: Identifying the event to reprocess including images, beliefs, feelings, and sensations. Establishing initial measures as baselines before reprocessing.
Phase IV – Desensitization: Begin using eye movement, tappers, or other dual attention bilateral stimulation (BLS) while you think about the traumatic event. Focusing on decreasing your distress until it reduces to zero (or 1, if appropriate) allowing new thoughts images, feelings, and sensations to emerge.
Phase V – Installation: Strengthening a positive belief that you want to associate with the target event until it feels completely true.
Phase VI – Body Scan: Asking you to hold in your mind both the target event and the positive belief while scanning the body from head to toe. Processing any lingering disturbance from your body with dual attention BLS.
Phase VII – Closure: Assisting you to return to a state of calm in the present moment whether the reprocessing is complete or not. Reprocessing of an event is complete when you feel neutral about it, the positive believe feels complete true, and your body is completely clear of disturbances.
Phase VIII – Reevaluation: At the beginning of each new session, I will discuss with you recently processed memories to ensure that distress is still low and positive cognition is strong. Future targets and directions for continued treatment are determined.

What can EMDR do for me?

EMDR can result in you feeling you are no longer controlled by a traumatic experiences but have a sense of autonomy and empowerment, a comfort in your body, and an improvement in your mood, sense of self, and general wellbeing. The reprocessing creates a literal synaptic repair and brings resolution to the mental injury.

How do I know if I have trauma?

It’s normal to wonder if what you’ve experienced would actually be considered trauma. Ultimately, any experience or series of experiences that has led you to feel unsafe, overwhelmed, disconnected, or otherwise impacted can be considered trauma.

How do I get started?

Schedule a free consultation with me. I will answer your questions and you can decide if I am the right therapist and place for you, your child, or your teenager.

Where can I learn more about EMDR?

Here are a few of my favorite EMDR videos: