EMDR

Trauma has a way of taking over your life.

Some forms of trauma have long-term impacts that can affect your relationships, influence your behavior, and create emotional uncertainty. Past trauma often keeps you on guard, anticipating something similar to repeat itself. As a result, some situations can trigger that experience, causing you to relive it once again.

Experiencing traumatic events in life can be devastating and hard to overcome. Moving on with life is difficult when you feel empty and alone. Each day you think the worst is behind you, yet the next day is the same.

Surely, you’ve done everything.

Trauma experienced from severe life circumstances (physical or sexual abuse, car accidents, military combat, loss of a loved one) or, more commonly, unpleasant life experiences (shame, embarrassment, broken heart, etc.) is treatable with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).

You try everything: talking to your friends, reading self-help books, listening to apps and videos, but the sadness, pain, and fear will not disappear. Days, weeks, and months can go by with no relief experienced. What else is there to do?

Here’s how EMDR works.

EMDR has been around since the 1980s and is one of the most proven and effective therapeutic methods to treat and reduce the effects of trauma. EMDR works by stimulating the right and left sides of the brain while you think about and process a disturbing traumatic event.

We activate the right and left sides of the brain with a procedure called bilateral stimulation. This entails moving the eyes, listening to sounds on headphones, or holding a pulsating device in your hands. It is advantageous to stimulate both sides of the brain because we want to ensure the rational and reasoning function of your brain (left side of the brain) is activated.

Changing how you think…

The procedure involves thinking about the memory while stimulating the right and left sides of your body with the bilateral stimulation. I will have you do this for about 30 seconds at a time, and you will summarize and tell me what you thought of during the set.

We will repeat the process until the disturbance or uncomfortable feelings begin to reduce and dissipate and you feel better. EMDR will not change the facts of the memory, but it will help change how you think about it and reduce the disturbing effects of the memory (fear, sadness, anger, shame, etc.).

Learn to live a life free of trauma.

Don’t let trauma keep you from the life you deserve.

I can help you learn to reprocess that event that keeps you stuck in an uncomfortable and disturbing cycle of your previous trauma.

Give me a call today, and let’s talk about how I can use EMDR to help you feel better.