Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy
Do images, feelings or body sensations of the past continue to revisit you, negatively impacting your life?
Have you experienced some difficult events in the past, thought you have moved past them, but later realize that they keep popping up? Sometimes you might be reminded of the event, or you have a dream about it, or other times the feelings of the past just overwhelm you like a title wave that came out of no where. Does this seem to happen at inopportune times like when you’re trying to go to sleep at night? When you’re intimate with your partner? Or when a need isn’t being met you feel like you overreact or completely shut down?
Trauma affects our memories in weird ways. If you sit back and think about it, you are probably never overwhelmed with a memory if brusing your teeth, or taking our the garbage, or putting your shoes on. So why is it that some memories seem to affect us grately, where as others are just memories?
When something happens in our lives, that is outside the “window of tolerance of emotion” or you might say, super overwhelming, our brains do not adequately process the experience. This can be true of “Big T’s” because they are so intense, tragic and even life threatening. Another reason some memories might not be adequately processed is if multiple negative events pile on top of each other and you don’t have either the time, or especially, adequate support in processing through the events. Therefore the “trauma” doesn’t necessarily have to be big and life threatening, but could be small things that add up over time, or as I call them, “litttle t’s”
There is no event TOO BIG that cannot be healed, and there is no event TOO LITTLE that is insignificant
My clients fall on two ends of a spectrum when it comes to trauma, they either believe that their trauma is too big and they won’t be able to handle healing it, or they see their pain as insignificant and don’t recognize that they have trauma and believe their life wasn’t that bad, so, “why am I struggling so much when I shouldn’t be.”
So what exactly is EMDR and how can it help me?
“The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.”
- Francine Shapiro
If you’re still having questions about EMDR and you’re thinking it might be a good fit for you, or someone recommended it to you and you’re not quite sure if it will be helpful for you, I invite you to give me a call or send an e-mail. I offer a Free 15 minute Phone Consult where you can ask me a bunch of questions and then determine if you want to set up an appointment. If you’ve read through this page and are thinking, “wow, this is me and I’d love to not feel this way anymore,” then I invite you to reach out today and we can start your path toward healing.