Trauma Resolution
What is EMDR?
In the same way the body does, our mind can naturally heal. Often during sleep we process daily events and even traumas.
In 1987, Francine Shapiro developed Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) using this natural process to help PTSD and many other mental health concerns.
What happens when you’ve had a disturbing incident?
Our body can often process new experiences without our awareness. But when something distressing happens–maybe an overwhelming event, perhaps a car accident, or repeated childhood abuse, our natural ability to cope can be overwhelmed.
Then it is possible for these events to be frozen in our brain. When this happens we say they are unprocessed. They get stored in our limbic system of our brain.
The limbic system is in our midbrain and is sometimes called the mammalian system in that mammals care for their young and have feelings.
We associate the limbic system with our emotions. When our unprocessed memories are stored in the limbic system we can be triggered and re-experience painful emotions. EMDR helps your brain process the traumatic memory in a natural way and can create connections between your brain’s memory networks taking a, “raw,” memory and moving it to storage in a verbal, “story,” mode.
EMDR Sessions
We will begin with inner resourcing using either tapping or slow short sets of eye movement to provide you with experiences of calm, safety, a sense of being grounded, or feeling more confident and as needed more lovable.
I use the Flash Technique for disturbing memories which is not activating and usually resolves the memory we are focusing on within one session.
This is not hypnosis and you are in control the whole time.