EMDR Therapy
“It’s your body’s own healing. We are just here to guide it.”
EMDR’s ability to quickly target and treat unprocessed adverse experiences allows it to have substantial positive impacts on a client’s life.
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is empirically validated as a treatment for trauma, negative life experiences, and other challenges. This standardized treatment involves bilateral stimulation, meaning that both the right and the left side of the brain are activated during treatment in order to help the brain reprocesses negative memories that may be causing harm to a client. That might mean moving one’s eyes rapidly back and forth, tapping back and forth on different sides of the body, scribbling back and forth on a paper, or feeling tactile sensations back and forth between one’s left and right hand, or another technique.
EMDR Q & A
+ What are EMDR sessions like?
During the sessions, I will help you assess your current situation, I will help you pick a “target” to focus on, and I will help teach you some relaxation techniques. We can then process memories together by using bilateral stimulation techniques. We can do this by following visual cues, tapping on our body, or even scribbling This does the desensitization part, helping us desensitize to the feelings of distress. It is also then used to reprocess the good stuff. Our body utilizes bilateral stimulation during our REM sleep, so we are essentially doing the same thing while awake. We aren’t changing anything, you still remember the same things and feel the same way, but it doesn’t sting you at the same level as it did before.
+ For someone who might be interested in EMDR, what does a typical first session look like?
We’d start off by doing a free consultation and figure out if it is something that the client wants to do. We’d chat and see what exactly is bothering the client. It’s also important to note that this isn’t talk therapy. Actually, there is very little talk, and some people really like that aspect of this form of therapy! Most of our first EMDR session will be guided visualization through your imagination, or we might talk about strategies for visualization if it's tough at first.
+ Who would you recommend EMDR therapy to?
EMDR is researched fully and utilized to treat PTSD, Depression, Panic Attacks, Anxiety, Eating Disorders, and Addiction, those are the main areas or most utilized, but it can be applicable to many scenarios.
More generally, I’d recommend EMDR therapy to anyone who has a belief, a thought, a feeling, or a sensation that is really causing a lot of dysregulation in their life. It can be a great form of therapy for people who don’t like to talk in session as much. It is also a shorter form of therapy and can be completed in a few months rather than more long-term forms.
+ What are some of the things you like about utilizing EMDR in the therapeutic space?
I love being able to lead clients through the process and partner with them on this journey. If we think about it as if we are making a cake, it’s like the client brings the stuff to make the cake and we make the cake together. It’s not like, “hmmm, let’s think through what the ingredients might be.” In EMDR, we know the ingredients, we are just working to put it all together. It is very organic, spiritual, and vulnerable. I love being able to lead clients through the process. I’m always asking; “okay, so what did you notice?” The clients have all the pieces, we are just putting them together in our sessions.
+ What makes EMDR so special?
People always say that body-based therapy is the key to trauma. Well, then the question is how do we do it? With something like EMDR, we have a formal structure we can use to really figure out how to implement a body-based strategy to work on lowering distress. This is a great way to utilize body-based therapy in a way that is very measurable.