Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is an approach to treatment that focuses on how trauma from our past and present, or fears about the future, are getting “stuck” in mostly unconscious parts of our minds and blocking our ability to heal and move forward. These traumatic memories trigger overactions that can manifest themselves in panic attacks, extreme avoidance behaviors, disassociation, mood dysregulation, acute stress or anxiety, compulsive behavior, and other areas that substantially impact quality of life.
EMDR uses eye movements like those we automatically experience during REM sleep to tap into our brain’s adaptive information processing system, its natural ability to heal itself. During these eye movements, the therapist works with the client to maintain grounding in the present moment while desensitizing and reprocessing the stuck trauma and negative thought patterns associated with it. The therapist and client then work to install new adaptive ways of thinking that build resilience while providing relief from previous traumatic blocks.
EMDR has emerged as one of the leading treatments for various forms of trauma and phobias, and is being utilized to effectively treat a variety of other disorders including depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, gender dysphoria, dissociative disorders, and personality disorders. EMDR therapy is effective for kids and adults alike.
Learn more about EMDR on EMDRIA by clicking here: https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/
The Eight Phases of EMDR: What to Expect
The EMDR process is structured into eight phases, each serving a specific purpose to ensure comprehensive and lasting healing. During EMDR, these phases are carefully personalized to your unique needs. Here's a general idea of what you can expect:
1. History-Taking and Treatment Planning
We’ll begin with a thorough intake session, gathering detailed information about your past experiences, current challenges, and therapy goals. Together, we’ll identify specific memories, triggers, and patterns to target during the intensive.
2. Preparation
This phase ensures you’re equipped with the tools you need to navigate the process safely and effectively. We’ll focus on building your emotional resilience with techniques such as:
Grounding exercises
Breathwork
Mindfulness practices
Establishing a sense of safety and trust in the therapeutic space
3. Assessment
During this phase, we’ll zero in on the specific memories and negative beliefs you want to address. We’ll measure the emotional intensity of these memories and identify positive beliefs you’d like to internalize by the end of the process.
4. Desensitization and Reprocessing
This is the heart of EMDR therapy. Using bilateral stimulation—such as guided eye movements, tapping, or auditory tones—we’ll help your brain process and neutralize distressing memories. This process allows you to reframe and resolve these experiences in a way that reduces their emotional charge.
5. Installation of Positive Beliefs
Once the distress associated with a memory is resolved, we’ll focus on strengthening positive, empowering beliefs. For example, “I am powerless” might transform into “I am strong and capable.”
6. Body Scan
Trauma often lingers in the body. This phase involves checking for any residual physical tension or discomfort related to the targeted memories and resolving it to promote full integration.
7. Closure
At the end of each session, we’ll use grounding and stabilization techniques to ensure you leave feeling safe and supported. You’ll also receive tools and strategies to help you continue feeling grounded after the intensive.
8. Reevaluation
In follow-up sessions, we’ll assess the progress made during previous sessions, explore any lingering issues, and plan for next steps as needed.
Personalized, Integrative Approach
Your healing journey is unique, and so is the approach I take. I may integrate additional therapeutic techniques based on your needs, such as:
Parts Work (Internal Family Systems): To address inner conflicts and create harmony between different parts of yourself.
Breathwork: To help regulate your nervous system and release stored tension.
Mindfulness Practices: To increase self-awareness and cultivate a sense of calm and presence.
DBT and/or CBT: To help stabilize and regulate painful emotions or undesired behaviors, and build distress tolerance
HAES/Intuitive Eating Principles: To integrate understanding, compassion, and distress tolerance towards disordered eating thoughts or behaviors, if applicable
This personalized approach ensures that each session is tailored specifically to your healing goals and emotional needs.
Is EMDR right for me?
If you have experienced trauma, you know firsthand how paralyzing it can be. Any person or event that triggers a reminder of the trauma can mean the difference between being able to function or completely shutting down, losing control, or running away. Our brain’s natural defense mechanism in a life and death or otherwise terrifying situation is to activate its flight, fright, or freeze response as a way of ensuring our survival. While that autonomic response helps us survive during that event, it can greatly inhibit our quality of life when it overreacts across future settings. EMDR differs from traditional forms of talk therapy in that the client is not required to provide detailed narratives of the trauma story and therefore is not triggered in the same way they otherwise may be. For some clients who are reluctant to have to relive the trauma through detailed expression, EMDR provides a welcome alternative. If you have noticed a lack of ability to maintain a sense of calm no matter how hard you try and you believe it may be related to painful events you have experienced, EMDR can be a great treatment option for you. This is especially true if you have tried other forms of treatment, gained a conceptual understanding of where this stress and/or anxiety response is coming from, learned ways of coping, but still have been unable to move forward and gain relief from your symptoms. EMDR is one of the few therapeutic treatments that is able to tap into our neurological processes in a way that produces lasting, healing change from even the darkest of memories.
