EMDR Therapy

Quite often I encounter people struggling with sleep, managing their mood, maintaining their relationships, drinking too much, or using substances, being mentally present throughout the day, or feeling numb. You may recognize that these are all classic signs of trauma and the various conditions caused or inflamed by traumatic experiences. One of the most promising evidence-based treatments for trauma is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR therapy can be used to heal from and reduce or eliminate symptoms related to upsetting life experiences, PTSD, depression, anxiety, OCD, self-harm, and other issues.

So many people hear this and immediately compare their life experiences to more extreme and traditional experiences of trauma. However, research on trauma is relatively new in comparison to other areas of research about mental health. Despite how trauma is commonly understood, what we now know from research is that what makes something traumatic varies from person to person; for one person that might mean experiences during war time or extreme violence, for others it means, being compared to their siblings over and over, having a breakup, or other common experiences.

After undergoing EMDR many people find that older memories that have influenced their everyday life, no longer have that “sting” that brings up all sorts of feelings and beliefs about themselves that can ruin their day. Often, they report feeling as if a memory that previously disrupted their lives feels like something that happened a long time ago, like regular memories. In addition, many symptoms previously reported can make significant declines including issues with eating, problematic drinking/drug use, or dysfunction in relationships

EMDR can help you attain your goals by clearing the path of any obstacles. Commonly this could be avoidance of upsetting things or triggers or negative beliefs about oneself, so that instead of dealing only with the intense emotion, people can start to build skills and create new, adaptive patterns of behavior that reinforce a sense of stability. My process of integrating EMDR into treatment involves learning about my patients and their individual goals so that I can figure out what we will target so that the treatment is as effective as possible. Additionally, I provide ample preparation for EMDR processing by educating my patients and assuring that they feel stable and prepared to face old memories.

If any of this resonated with you or you’d like to learn more about how EMDR could be helpful to you. Please contact me here to schedule a free consultation.