EMDR Therapy
What Is EMDR Therapy?
Many of our prospective clients have tried traditional talk therapy in the past, which equipped them with valuable tools, skills, and insights. As a result, they often have a solid understanding of their experiences, attachment styles, and emotional patterns.
However, despite this knowledge, many of these clients still feel stuck. They keep struggling with the same fears and falling into the same trauma responses, as if the past is still present in their lives. They seek EMDR therapy to help them bridge the gap between what they intellectually know and how they want to feel.
After all, sometimes knowing the answers isn’t enough. Although the mind can logically move on from trauma, the body may be stuck in survival mode—or what’s known as a “fight-flight-or-freeze” response.
EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a form of trauma counseling that can help clients who haven’t found relief through traditional talk therapy. It goes beyond talking about experiences and directly targets how traumatic memories are stored in the brain.
While traditional talk therapy focuses on insights and coping strategies, EMDR helps the brain reprocess stuck memories, reducing their intensity and shifting the negative beliefs that they caused. This allows clients to feel change on an embodied level instead of just comprehending it intellectually.
How Effective Is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR is highly effective for people dealing with trauma, PTSD, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. It’s backed by science and recognized as an evidence-based treatment by the American Psychological Association (APA), Department of Defense (DOD), and World Health Organization (WHO) . According to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, studies demonstrate that EMDR can effectively reduce trauma symptoms after three months of therapy.
What makes EMDR so powerful? The brain and body have a natural capacity for healing, and EMDR taps directly into this ability through the use of eye movements, tapping exercises, and other forms of bilateral stimulation. These techniques allow the nervous system to “digest” distressing memories that were once too painful to process.
At Emotional Wellness, we utilize EMDR therapy to help clients recover from complex trauma, childhood trauma, attachment wounds, and numerous other distressing life experiences. We’ve witnessed this unique approach’s incredible healing power with our clients and we want you to experience the same healing in your own life.
How Does EMDR Therapy Work?
When something difficult happens, your brain is supposed to process it and file it away like you’d file a book away on a shelf. But if the experience is too intense, your brain can get overwhelmed, leaving that “book” open and unprocessed. This is why, even after talking about an issue in therapy, you might still not feel relief—because it’s not fully resolved.
With EMDR, we’ll use specific techniques like tapping or guided eye movements while you briefly focus on a traumatic memory. This will help your brain reprocess the experience so that it gets properly filed away and no longer triggers the same emotional reaction. Over time, the memory will feel less intense and you can gain a greater sense of clarity and relief.
Essentially, bilateral stimulation exercises help the brain move painful memories from an emotional format to a narrative format. Once a memory is stored in a narrative format, you can still remember what happened, but it doesn’t feel as distressing or emotionally charged. The brain is able to understand that it’s in the past now, allowing you to “close the book” on it.
Additionally, your EMDR therapist may pair bilateral stimulation with positive or peaceful memories. This can create a sense of calmness that you can freely return to if you ever feel distressed while processing trauma. After all, EMDR therapy always goes at your own pace. It is not a form of hypnosis, and you will always remain alert, awake, and in control.
How Can EMDR Therapy Benefit Your Life?
In the short term, EMDR can often bring swift and noticeable relief for those with single incident trauma and greater understanding and insight for those with complex trauma. In the long term, the goal is deeper healing—helping clear old beliefs and patterns that have been holding you back so that you feel less triggered by past events, more in control of your emotions, and better able to engage in your relationships.
Through EMDR therapy, you can gain relief from trauma-related symptoms like flashbacks and intrusive thoughts and experience shifts in negative beliefs (e.g., “I’m not safe” becomes “I’m safe now”). EMDR can also help you improve your emotional regulation, making you feel more grounded and in control. Most importantly, you can gain a sense of closure, feeling freer from the weight of past experiences and more present in your daily life.
We All Have The Ability To Break Free From Our Own Pasts
At Emotional Wellness, our counselors are trained in EMDR therapy and receive ongoing education and supervision to stay current in the field. We combine EMDR therapy with various somatic (body-based) practices like Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE), allowing for calmness in the nervous system and full, holistic healing of trauma symptoms.
All of us have the innate ability to heal from emotional and physiological pain, and EMDR harnesses this ability by engaging with the mind and body on a deeper level. If you want to experience similar healing in your own life, we encourage you to connect with us. To get started, you can use the contact form or call 347-916-9596. We look forward to hearing from you!
