EMDR Therapy can help you feel like yourself again

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How can EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy help me feel more like myself, more present in my relationships, and more gratified at work?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy is a bottom-up approach to healing from trauma and the effects of chronic stress. 

 

What happens when you experience a potentially traumatic event or chronic stress?

When you experience a potentially traumatic event or are exposed to stress over a long period of time, your brain detects a threat and your body automatically switches into survival mode. If you have access to enough resources to resolve the distress to your nervous system, you will experience a sense of settling in your mind and body as the alarm system in your brain turns off. Resources can be helpful people, places, activities, beliefs, or anything that helps you feel safe and supported. You will remember the event as part of your story, but you will probably not find it very distressing or disruptive for long after the event.

Often, distressing events happen suddenly and are very intense. Long-term stress can be an experience of absorbing too much and receiving too little support for too long. In any of these scenarios, your nervous system doesn’t have access to enough resources to resolve the distress on its own and the alarm system in your brain remains switched on. 

 

How would I know if I’m experiencing trauma or the effects of chronic stress?

The human nervous system evolved from its most primitive form which relied on the ability to freeze and collapse, or feign death, as its primary defense from predators. From there, the human nervous systems’ defenses evolved to include the ability to fight, or engage directly with predators and the ability to flee, or escape to safety. The most recent adaptation in the human nervous system’s survival arsenal is the ability to engage socially and foster an emotional connection with other beings. 

If your nervous system doesn’t have access to enough resources to resolve the distress from a potentially traumatic event or long-term stress, your system will get stuck in survival mode and you will likely experience a range of symptoms related to these states of hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal.

 

Hyper-arousal states can feel like: 

Hypervigilance / everything feels like a threat, overthinking, feeling anxious, irritability, difficulty relaxing, difficulty concentrating, feeling a sense of dread or impending doom, overfunctioning / doing more than is needed or expected at work and in relationships

 

Hypo-arousal states can feel like: 

Sadness, loss of interest in things that used to feel good, feeling alone in your experience or disconnected from other people, feeling numb from emotions, feeling detached from yourself and your experience, avoiding other people

 

What happens in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy is a structured approach to resolving the effects of trauma and long-term stress. EMDR works on the principle that your current distress has roots in earlier, unprocessed memories. These could be recent memories, memories from childhood, or even ancestral memories. Your EMDR therapist may also work with you on targeting and processing distressing symptoms directly.

If you work with an EMDR therapist, you’ll collaborate on your goals for therapy and the ways in which you hope therapy will help improve your experience of your life. 

Your EMDR therapist will work with you to identify the resources you currently use and to develop new resources that will be helpful as you begin to work on distressing symptoms or memories.

Your therapist will help you identify ‘target’ symptoms or memories and map out a plan for processing these memories until they are no longer distressing to you.

 

How is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy different from narrative therapy or hypnosis? 

EMDR therapy includes the activation of distressing memories, but it doesn’t require that you tell these details to your therapist or relive the details of the events. Your therapist will guide you to notice aspects of the target symptom or memory along with a dual attention stimulus (DAS). This is the term for the bilateral eye movements, auditory tones and/or tapping that are fundamental to EMDR. These stimuli serve to help you stay in the present moment as you notice memory content. Similar to the process that facilitates memory storage during REM sleep, these stimuli also help facilitate the processing of the distressing memory as your brain connects memory content to more adaptive, or more functional information. As your brain connects the target symptom or memory to more adaptive information, your distress related to the symptom or memory decreases in intensity.

During the processing phase of EMDR, your EMDR therapist will guide you to just notice the images, sensations and emotions that come up. This is the phase of EMDR therapy where your brain’s natural ability to resolve distress takes center stage. Your job at this point is to simply observe what comes up and to stay with the new information as your brain continues to process. Your therapist will help you connect these observations to more functional information when needed. 

You remain conscious and in control during the entire EMDR therapy process. Your EMDR therapist will encourage you to stay with difficult memory content as long as you feel like you are able to maintain dual awareness – the ability to be aware of the memory and the present moment at the same time. You can stop the process at any time you feel overwhelmed and your EMDR therapist will support you in returning to a sense of safety.

 

Can I heal from the effects of trauma and long-term stress? 

Yes, healing is possible. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) Therapy is among the latest developments in trauma treatment that takes advantage of research in neuroplasticity and memory reconsolidation. These treatments have been demonstrated to resolve distress related to trauma and long-term stress. 

As you work through your treatment plan with your therapist, you will begin to experience relief from the symptoms of trauma and long-term stress. You will experience a sense of settling in your mind and body as the alarm system in your brain turns off. You will remember the event as part of your story, but you will no longer find it distressing or disruptive. Your ability to be present and enjoy your life will increase and you will likely start to experience your relationships and your work with a renewed sense of hope and possibility.

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