EMDR therapy helps people heal from trauma, anxiety, and other difficult life experiences.
Would EMDR Therapy be Good for You?
There's been lots of buzz about EMDR lately. You may have seen Prince Harry talking about using EMDR to treat childhood trauma or Sandra Bullock discussing how it helped her after someone broke into her home. There's good reason that it's being used more and more. Since the 1980s, there has been a lot of science to support that it's highly effective.
While it's most often talked about as a treatment for trauma, it can help much more than that. EMDR can be used on all age groups for a wide range of challenges.
EMDR might be a good fit for you if any of these sound familiar:
- Negative self-talk is a constant -- you beat yourself up more than anyone else could
- You have traumatic experiences in your background that you can't or don't want to talk about
- Difficult memories run like movies in your head, many with strong emotional reactions
- You seem to over-respond to situations more than others do
- There are things in everyday life that trigger your instinct to run, fight, or check-out
- Your past gets in the way of your relationships
- Emotions seem to control you
- Perfectionism and over-controlling everything possible is your main way to go through life
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR stands for "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing". It's a type of psychotherapy that helps you reprocess events from your past, using bilateral stimulation (such as eye movement) to desensitize those memories.
In EMDR, we use a technique called "bilateral stimulation" to repeatedly activate opposite sides of the brain. Originally, this was through eye movement where a client followed a light or their therapist's fingers back and forth. The basis of this is how eye movements mimic the eye movements in sleep during REM sleep. Bilateral stimulation also includes different things like: holding devices in their hands to feel a soft buzz, wearing earphones to hear a tone go back and forth, or tapping on your own shoulders or knees.
Through this process, you can reprocess trapped memories so that your brain can begin processing them normally. Through reprocessing the memories, you can gain a better understanding of why you have some beliefs you have and why they're still impacting you. Once those memories aren't disturbing anymore, they have less of an impact on your day-to-day life.
Here's a short movie about EMDR that people often find helpful.
What does EMDR help?
This technique started out as treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Since then, research has shown that it's effective with many other mental health issues, including:
- Panic Attacks
- Complicated Grief
- Dissociative Disorders
- Disturbing Memories
- Phobias
- Pain Disorders
- Performance Anxiety
- Stress Reduction
- Sexual and/or Physical Abuse
- Body Dysmorphic Disorders
- Personality Disorders
Not sure this sounds like you?
Do you experience distressing emotions that appear to you, and perhaps to others, to be excessive given the current situation? Do you tend to be highly reactive to certain triggers? Is there one or more dysfunctional belief that you believe about yourself that on an intellectual level you know is not true? If so, you may still be a good candidate for EMDR therapy.
Are you ready for EMDR?
If you're ready to let go of the patterns of thinking and behavior that are tied to the past, we can help. EMDR is highly effective and helps you respond to situations in the here-and-now without your painful past being in control. Our clients often tell us that they've been in pain a long time before they tried counseling. You don't have to suffer -- we can help.