WHAT IS EMDR THERAPY?
EMDR is an evidenced-based therapy designed to help people recover from trauma and other distressing life events. EMDR neutralizes painful feelings and body sensations associated with the trauma, which means you won’t feel an emotional charge when you think of those memories. And once they are fully integrated into your memory networks, new emotional learnings occur that help you realize how amazing you really are.
WHY DO I NEED EMDR?
Unprocessed traumatic memories become stuck in your brain and nervous system, and while those painful thoughts and feelings are not actually true (i.e., “I am unloveable”), they feel like fact. EMDR researchers believe they are stored in the wrong form of memory and do not allow for new connections and learnings to be made after the traumatic event has occurred. This can can lead to chronic depression or anxiety, personality concerns, overwhelming stress, and prolonged suffering. EMDR gets to the roots of your pain in an accelerated fashion, often taking only 1-3 sessions for one traumatic memory to be fully digested and metabolized out of your body.
WHAT DOES TRAUMA DO TO US?
Trauma is anything that causes a lasting negative impact on the brain and body, and traumatic memories disrupts the brain’s ability to integrate those painful experiences into our memory networks. Read more about how trauma and healing works here. Because of unprocessed trauma, we cannot learn from these experience and use that information to help us move through life’s challenges with a sense of ease and power. Traumatic memories carry past pain: those memories hold the emotions, body sensations, and beliefs that were experienced at the time of the trauma. This means the trauma is remembered and re-experienced in the body when the old pain is triggered by internal or external events.
WHAT ARE SOME SYMPTOMS OF UNRESOLVED TRAUMA?
*Panic *Spacing out or feeling disconnected from reality
*Sleep Disturbances *Distrusting others
*Easily triggered or overreacting *Feeling ungrounded or nervous
*Losing interest in former hobbies *Unexplained somatic pains
*Autoimmune disorders *Feeling trapped, stuck, or helpless
HOW DOES EMDR WORK?
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (BLS, or eye movements) to unlock traumatic memories stored in your nervous system, which allows them to be processed safely in therapy. Together we’ll identify material that holds traumatic memories for you and target those for reprocessing which stimulates the Information Processing System in the brain, allowing the material to be integrated in your brain’s memory networks. You’ll be able to share your experiences with me as I use BLS to help take the pain off your nervous system. As old trauma is processed, we’ll explore your present-day symptoms that are causing distress, and have you imagine a positive future, all using BLS to metabolize the painful emotions out of your body and associate positive beliefs about you and your future. You’ll experience new emotional learnings from your past that are safe, healthy, and adaptive rather than beating yourself up or living in chronic fear of the future.
HOW DO YOU PREPARE ME FOR EMDR?
As a practice, I incorporate a parts frame to help you welcome all parts of yourself home so you can feel safe and relaxed enough to reprocess painful traumatic memories. I also conduct Resource Development and Installation (RDI) from an attachment-focused lens, which develop specific capacities that will help you face challenging material, tolerate greater levels of distress, relax your body and brain, and shift flexibly between your emotions. RDI interventions strengthen neural connections in the brain, all of which involve increasing your sense of mastery, reconnecting you to beloved others, and helping you connect to resources like the natural world or religious figures, if you so choose. Enhancing these resources inside your body and brain will help you feel safe to explore past pain.
IS EMDR RIGHT FOR ME?
Not only is EMDR an effective therapy for PTSD, but it’s also been shown to help with performance anxiety, OCD, phobias, chronic pain, unresolved grief, depression, ADHD, personality disorders, addiction, couple concerns, and more. Combined with the latest insights from brain science and mindfulness, EMDR therapy is a powerful tool for healing. Everyone has experienced times of overwhelm, abandonment, and loss, and these experiences continue to impact us. And all those experiences are all worthy of being witnessed in the context of a loving and empathic therapeutic relationship.
HOW WILL I FEEL AFTER COMPLETING EMDR?
After completing EMDR therapy with me, my clients report feeling empowered, hopeful, connected, peaceful, joyful, and accepting, of themselves as well as with others. My goal as your licensed clinician is to create the conditions for health and resilience to arise within you. And when clients are able to invest in themselves, they are able to experience tremendous growth and healing!
Let’s talk! I would be honored to work with you!
Please reach out to me for counseling by calling or texting my practice number which is (817) 642 – 7305, or send me an email at jenn at theholyabsurd dot com (to prevent spam bots). I look forward to hearing from you!
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash