You Don’t Have To Live Overwhelmed By Trauma - EMDR can help.
You don’t need to live in the past.
Painful memories from the past pop into your consciousness uninvited, making you relive those horrible experiences you worked so hard to forget.
Intrusive thoughts and emotions have the power to make you feel completely out of control.
You struggle to sleep because vivid dreams wake you up in a sweat.
You try so hard to stay grounded in the present but your mind plays out those moments from the past like a movie, making you feel exactly how you felt when that memory actually happened.
Trauma’s lingering effects are invasive and painful. And, it makes living life extremely hard.
What is trauma?
Trauma is a physical and emotional reaction that results from surviving an extremely distressing experience.
Trauma responses get encoded in your mind and body, keeping you in survival mode, even when there is no actual threat happening for you anymore in the present. Living with the effects of trauma is exhausting. It’s painful. Whether you survived abuse as a child, assault as an adult, or grew up with an emotionally abusive parent, trauma can store itself in your mind and body even long afterwards.
Your traumatic experience may have been a one-time horrible event that you can’t seem to shake. Or, it may have been ongoing – like the result of a toxic relationship. Trauma can make you feel stuck in the experience or in the lingering negative messages. No matter how much you try to forget the past, moving on feels impossible.
But, now the good news: You can heal from trauma. And, healing is totally worth it.
How does EMDR treat trauma?
Standard talk-therapy often isn’t enough to stop the invasive memories or nightmares. That’s why therapists have additional modalities that are evidence based, meaning effective and proven to decrease these painful trauma symptoms.
EMDR, also known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, was developed in the 1980’s by Francine Shapiro. EMDR focuses on bilateral stimulation to help trauma survivors process painful memories that were basically too intense for their brain and body to process on its own.
During EMDR, the therapist uses their hands to guide the client’s eye movements in a way that engages both regions of the brain and helps process these memories that are “stuck.” Sometimes hand buzzers or headphones are used to cause bilateral brain stimulation.
While this is happening, the therapist supports their client so that the client’s brain and body can finally process their way through the event.
During EMDR, the therapist will work with their client to identify the traumatic experiences and any negative self-beliefs that were created as a result from the trauma. For instance, an assault survivor may believe they were somehow at fault and hold the belief, “I am bad.” The survivor has no fault in the assault, but the negative cognition can feel very real for them. Their therapist then targets the incorrect belief and helps them replace the unhelpful belief with a more positive (and accurate) statement.
How does EMDR therapy work?
The goal of EMDR is that you’ll become desensitized to the painful memories, allowing you to recall what occurred, but without the severe emotional reaction.
Using these target sequence plans; you and your therapist identify the memories that are bothering you, as well as the negative beliefs that resulted from them. Together, you explore more helpful beliefs that you might not have yet, but would like to eventually own, such as “I am a good person.”
The thought of intentionally thinking of these traumatic experiences can be anxiety provoking for you. Your therapist knows this! So, throughout the EMDR process, you and your therapist will focus on safety and coping skills, so that you don’t become overwhelmed by it.
How do I access EMDR therapy?
You deserve to not have trauma control your happiness and ability to connect with others.
If you would like to overcome the negative effects that trauma keeps having on your life, contact an EMDR therapist. Several clinicians at LaunchPad Counseling are trained in EMDR. You can contact us to find out more. You can schedule an in-person appointment with a therapist in Richmond VA, or an online therapy appointment if you live in Virginia.