EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
EMDR is an intervention designed to facilitate healing from trauma, anxiety, depression, and many other types of issues. It can shorten the duration and number of therapy sessions a great deal.
How does EMDR work? The trained clinician and your brain do all the work! Eye movements activate certain areas of the brain to release emotion, thoughts, and memories. Sometimes beliefs and memories get stuck in our brains like a CD or record that skips and keeps playing the same tune over and over. Stuck memories and beliefs can be intrusive (like a skipping CD), flavoring most or all current experiences with whatever happened in the past.
EMDR is a way of getting unpleasant or traumatic memories and beliefs unstuck from the brain, allowing fresh perspectives to form. Feelings, thought patterns, and memories that once blocked the greater view of our lives can be shifted so that we can see the bigger picture, gaining more self-empowerment. As perception grows and personal power returns, more choices become naturally apparent in our everyday experiences, because the “skip” is no longer affecting the processing capacity of the brain.
Our experiences help shape who we are, and they are important to us. They are part of our identity. However, we are more than our experiences, and EMDR helps restore the totality of self, the beauty of the entire experience of being human.
EMDR has many facets. It can help with traumatic memories, anxiety, depression, and self-esteem problems. By finding within the brain experiences of feeling better, feeling true positive beliefs about the self, clients can begin form stronger and better coping mechanisms to deal not only with past memories and negative beliefs, but current stressors.
