TRAUMA & EMDR THERAPY
Do you feel trapped in a never-ending storm, with no control over your life or your emotions?
Living with trauma can feel like driving a vehicle with no brakes: you don’t feel fully in control. You are overreacting rather than confidently responding to seemingly normal stresses of life. You are often on edge, easily irritated, or emotionally numb, leaving you unable to experience pleasure or joy. You might find yourself reliving your trauma through flashbacks or nightmares that disturb your sleep. Avoiding people, places, or things that remind you of distressing memories or engaging in self-destructive behaviors have become your coping strategies.
Sense of safety and peace seem like a distant dream. You are constantly on the watch-out for what could go wrong, draining you of energy and robbing you of present-moment joy. In relationships, you might feel distant from people, unable to fully connect, or fear rejection. Although you crave closeness and connection, you might be pushing people away by lashing out or mistrusting them. Conversely, you may people-please, over-give, or struggle to communicate your needs and boundaries to avoid abandonment.
You are exhausted of a never-ending battle with guilt, shame, and worthlessness and wondering if you are “broken beyond repair.”
You are not broken. You’ve been surviving as best as you can. Now it’s time to regain control of your life and thrive.
Trauma is what happened to you. It’s not who you are.
Trauma is a wound, and just like a physical injury, it can leave scars. You have likely experienced trauma, if you have gone through a distressing or overwhelming experience, like an accident, abuse, or loss that shook you to your core, or have repeatedly experienced sexual, physical, or emotional abuse or neglect. Trauma can also result from societal injustices like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, sexism, and all other forms of discrimination that leave you feeling unsafe, unseen, or like you don’t belong. The scars of trauma can affect how you think, feel, and act, often causing symptoms like anxiety, challenges with regulating emotions, or difficulty trusting others.
Here's the good news: Just as physical wounds can heal with proper care, so can emotional and psychological ones. In a safe environment and with the right tools and skills, you can work through the pain, regain control, and find hope and healing. Remember, you're not alone, and there is a path to recovery.
Pathway to Trauma Recovery
Trauma recovery unfolds in stages and at a pace that feels right and safe to you.
Stage 1: Establish Safety and Stability
Critical to any trauma healing work is establishing a safe and stable foundation from which you can access, process, and heal painful memories and beliefs that keep you stuck. You will do this by learning skills and tools to:
Regulate difficult emotions without getting overwhelmed by them
Manage painful and unwanted experiences, and minimize unhelpful responses to them
Increase self-awareness and understand how thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors impact your emotions
Implement strategies for self-care and self-compassion
*Some people notice remarkable improvements in quality of life and functioning after Stage 1 and choose not to proceed with the additional stages.
Stage 2: Remember and Mourn
Once safety and stability is established, processing painful memories can begin. This does not mean reliving or rehashing traumatic memories in great detail. Within the safe container of therapy and using powerful tools like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), you will learn to:
Review memories to lessen their emotional intensity, revise their meanings for your life and identity, and reduce flashbacks and nightmares if they are present.
Process grief about unwanted or abusive experiences and their negative effects on your life.
Mourn good experiences that you did not have but deserved to have.
Stage 3: Reconnect
In this stage of recovery, the focus is on helping you reconnect with people, meaningful activities, and other aspects of your life that trauma has disrupted or kept you from fully enjoying. Integrating the lessons and tools from Stage 1 and Stage 2, you’ll learn to reengage with life more clarity, purpose and meaning.
EMDR THERAPY
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a structured therapy that helps trauma survivors with reprocessing their painful memories and forming new neural pathways in the brain. This transformative process ultimately lessens the emotional pain of trauma.
EMDR works by mimicking the brain's natural mechanisms during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. During REM sleep, your eyes move from side to side, a process referred to as "bilateral stimulation." This natural process aids in memory storage and emotional processing. In EMDR sessions, you'll concentrate on distressing memories while your therapist guides specific eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation. This bilateral stimulation allows your brain to reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their intensity and emotional charge. EMDR effectively "desensitizes" you to painful memories, freeing you from the grip of triggers, flashbacks, and nightmares.
This evidence-based therapy is extensively researched and widely endorsed, making it one of the most effective treatments for trauma, anxiety, depression, OCD, chronic pain, addictions, and other distressing life experiences. It is recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs/Dept. of Defense, the World Health Organization, and other national and international organizations. You can learn more about EMDR here.