How does EMDR therapy work?

EMDR is taken place in a safe and vulnerable environement and each session will be about 90 minutes. There can be 8 phases seen throughout this therapy. EMDR therapy requires less talking than normal therapy, but instead allows the brain to heal its self through its own healing process. Bilateral eye stimualtion is used throughout the process incorporating eye movements, tones, or tapping. By doing this, it allows your amygdala to calm down mimicing slow wave sleep and becomming synchronizied with the rest of your brain.

How does EMDR therapy affect the brain?

Our brains are an amazing organ that have the abaility to recover from traumatic events and memories. EMDR incorporates communications and signals between the amygdala(alarm for stress in the brain), hippocampus(helps with learning, and memories with safety and danger) and the prefrontal cortex(controls, regulates emotions) . Trauma can be resolved and managed, however the trauma may not be fully processed which is where EMDR comes into practice. When the body is stressed it is natural to go into fight, flight or freeze. When there is trauma that happens our brains go into frozen mode and freeze the memory, events, situations which can be overwhelming. EMDR helps the brain to process the memories and allows normal healing to occur. The expereince will always be there, however the fight, flight and freeze mode from the situation will be resolved.

-EMDR International Association

Who can Benefit?

People of all ages can benefit from EMDR. EMDR can help a wide selection of differnt stressors:

• Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias

• Chronic Illness and medical issues

• Depression and Bipolar Disorders

• Dissociative disorders

• Eating disorders

• Grief and loss

• Pain

• Performance anxiety

• Personality disorders

• Post Trumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) and other trauma related issues

• Sexual assault

• Sleep disturbance

• Substance abuse and addictions

• Violence and abuse

What is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR is eye movement desentization and repreocessing that is a psychotherapy technique primarily used to help individuals with trauma and PTSD. EMDR faciliates aid with processing traumatic events or situations to bring a solution for the individual. The goal of EMDR therapy is to help clients reprocess and distance themselves from past, current or adverse sitautions in their life.