How Can EMDR Help with Trauma?
Have you ever wondered if you are still being impacted by overwhelming events that happened in the past? Has an event left you with a lingering sense of powerlessness, guilt, distrust, or shame? Are your current emotional reactions out of proportion to your situation? Do you re-experience past events or work hard to avoid thinking about them? Trauma can have lingering impact on you and EMDR therapy can help.
EMDR is a well-researched and empirically validated therapy approach that facilitates healing from distressing experiences that are maladaptively stored in the brain. The human brain has a natural information processing system that allows for the integration of helpful learning. This system keeps you moving forward in life, able to exist in the present moment rather than feeling stuck in the past.
When you experience traumatic events, the brain’s adaptive information processing system is bypassed and the brain stores these experiences in a unique way. These events; the images, sounds, body sensations, and emotions, are stored in a raw, unprocessed form that can feel “frozen in time.” In a gentle way, EMDR therapy can help the brain process these memories so that your brain’s normal healing function can resume.
After participating in a season of EMDR therapy, most clients report having a new perspective on overwhelming experiences and a more positive view of themselves. Whether you have gone through a big “T” trauma (natural disaster, abuse, car wreck, betrayal, assault) or whether you suffer from an accumulation of little “t” traumas (emotional abuse, death of a dream, loss of a significant relationship), EMDR therapy may be able to assist you in moving toward greater healing and freedom.
If you partner with an EMDR therapist, you can expect the therapist to help you to maintain “dual awareness” during sessions, with one foot in the past and one foot in the safety of the present moment. The use of bilateral stimulation helps maintain dual awareness and assists the brain with processing. Some examples of bilateral stimulation include eye movements (watching the therapists fingers as they move back and forth) or holding pulsing tappers in your hands. Because the therapy was developed with the use of eye movements, it earned the name EMDR which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
EMDR therapists will also:
Ensure that you feel safely regulated before thinking about distressing material
Inquire about the difficulties of life today in order to best target past events for EMDR processing
Work with past memories, present situations, and future scenarios
Draw our your personal strengths and resources to help you heal.
If you would like more information on EMDR therapy, visit the EMDR International Association’s website http://www.emdria.org. Or, schedule an appointment with an EMDR therapist at Memorial Family Connections to find out if EMDR is right for you.
