"Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you."
-Gabor Maté
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR therapy is an extensively-researched, effective psychotherapy that was originally discovered for PTSD and traumatic/stressful life experiences. EMDR therapy is now researched and used for a variety of disorders, including dissociative disorders, complicated grief, panic disorder, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and many other mental health symptoms and disorders.
What’s different about EMDR?
EMDR is different from other psychotherapies because it can work faster than other therapies and can resolve symptoms completely. EMDR can work in fewer sessions than other therapies. Additionally, EMDR does not require you to talk in detail about distressing experiences, and instead, helps your brain’s natural healing process to resume.
Your brain has an effective, natural mental healing mechanism that learns from your experiences by integrating and processing them.
The natural healing mechanism in the brain for processing information can be compared to the process that happens in REM sleep, when your eyes go back and forth. Your brain associates information, makes appropriate connections, stores necessary information, and discards the rest. It is learning and unlearning, processing memories and experiences.
During EMDR, the brain’s natural healing system is activated to target the “stuck” experience, or the root of the problem.
Typically, when the brain reprocesses these past stuck experiences, present symptoms are completely resolved and generalized. Some symptoms include experiencing extreme, negative emotions, distorted beliefs, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, panic, phobias, harmful coping mechanisms, and negative behavior patterns. The truth is, any symptom can be connected to a past experience. If you are experiencing issues in the present and you want things to change, I will help you explore what’s connected to the past and see what EMDR can help you with.
When an experience is stressful or traumatic, the brain’s way of processing information can get “stuck”, and that experience stays stuck in the past in your brain. This means that it is stored in your brain with the original emotions, beliefs, and sensations that occurred when you first experienced the stressful experience or trauma.When something triggers one of these stuck experiences, the past will show up in the present. Mental health symptoms are connected to earlier stressful or traumatic experiences that have not been able to be processed yet.