EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. These experiences may have occurred recently or long ago in childhood. With EMDR, people can experience theraputic benefits that once took years to achieve, allowing mind to heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.
When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. With EMDR, similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using EMDR, I work to help clients move through the emotional blocks that result from large and small traumatic events and activate their natural healing processes.
For many of us, when we think of trauma, we think of capital "T" events such as wars, tornados, car wrecks, rapes, or assaults incest, etc. What we may not be aware of are the little "t" traumas experienced earlier in life. These are the kinds of traumas that occur when we get ostracized from a childhood friend group or when a parent fails to show warmth and love and respect toward a child or we "lose" a parent to divorce, death, alcohol or indifference - anytime we internalize a negative belief about ourselves and then continue to live our lives as if that negative belief were true. EMDR is a very effective way of resolving these both "T" and "t" traumas.
