EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specific psychotherapy practice that has been extensively researched and validated since its development in the 1980s to treat PTSD.

EMDR targets a traumatic memory and helps the brain decouple its associated feelings, sensations, and distorted beliefs, which allows us to move out of the “stuck” trauma state and into healing and recovery.

Some issues EMDR is used to treat:

• anxiety
• panic attacks
• depression
• feeling “triggered” or “stuck”
• PTSD and complex PTSD
• single incident trauma (accident, assault, etc.)
• chronic trauma
• performance anxiety
• low self esteem
• grief
• body dysmorphia
• phobias

Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR does not require the story or any details of the disturbing memory or event (which can be re-traumatizing to remember). It also does not require the client to even know what happened (for example as a very young child, or in confusing relational dynamics).

Instead, the rhythmic eye movement (or tapping), while briefly focusing on one aspect of the memory, stimulates a re-learning process by the brain that typically significantly reduces or eliminates the related emotional intensity and related symptoms.

EMDR has been recognized as an effective treatment for trauma by the American Psychiatric Association and “strongly recommended” by the US Departments of Veterans Affairs and of Defense.

EMDR can reprocess…fears, phobias, terrors, and anxieties that are connected to painful memories that keep (us)
trapped by these ghosts from the past.
-Esly Regina Carvalho, PhD, Deal with Your Past

Photo: Tanja Tepavac, Unsplash