EMDR Therapy in Texas
Do you have a hard time thinking about your past?
Your childhood haunts you and you avoid it like the plague, maybe your memories are a little hazy but you know it wasn’t great. Maybe something traumatic happened to you but you never talk about it and just hope it goes away eventually. Maybe you say your childhood was “fine” but when you tell stories about you growing up, people give you the face. You know the one, the horrified, that isn’t funny face.
Trauma affects all of us in one way or another. As someone once said, no one ever escapes childhood without some scars. EMDR therapy helps when the wounds are deep and are affecting you present day.
A lot of the time, we aren’t even consciously aware of how our trauma affects us in the present. EMDR therapy can help us get to the root of the issue instead of just focusing on the symptoms.
Keep reading to learn more about trauma.
EMDR Therapy Can Help
What are the symptoms of Trauma?
The official definition is this: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy treatment that is designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. Basically it helps those who struggle with traumatic memories.
Let’s break it down.
Eye movement is the mechanism which EMDR therapy uses. Francine Shapiro, the creator of EMDR therapy made this miraculous discovery when going on a walk when she was upset. She noticed when she moved her eyes back and forth taking in the things around her, it helped her feel better.
What started off as a hunch, she ran with and discovered bilateral stimulation, which means affecting both sides of your body. This mechanism targets both your right and left hemisphere of the brain and can help you work through traumatic memories. TBH the exact reason why this works is still unknown and continued research is ongoing. Aren’t our brains so cool though?!
Shapiro believed our brains have the capacity to heal themselves when they are not blocked in any way. EMDR therapy helps remove the blocks so the brain can heal.
To help illustrate what it is like to hold on to these red hot traumatic memories I really like this metaphor “The Seeping Box”.
Check it out here: THE SEEPING BOX METHAPOR
Now the reprocessing part helps replace old thinking patterns you associate with your past experiences like, “I am a disappointment”, “I should've known better”, “I can never trust anyone.” into new healthier thinking patterns such as “I am okay just the way I am”, “I do the best I can”, and “I can choose whom I trust”.
Keep reading to learn more!
Eye movement desensitization reprocessing. Whew. That is a mouthful! What the heck is it and how can it help me?
What are some common signs your past is affecting your present?
If you struggle with the following, EMDR therapy might be a good fit for you:
Nightmares or flashbacks
Actively avoiding the area where your trauma occurred
Avoiding any topic that is closely related to your trauma. For example if you are a survivor of sexual assault and you feel triggered watching anything close to this on tv.
Having a hard time being vulnerable with others
Fear of intimacy and avoidance of close relationships
Physical symptoms, such as headaches or stomachaches, without medical explanation
Being very hard on yourself when you make a mistake or fall short of perfection with anything
Numb with alcohol, drugs, sex, work, shopping, anything really to avoid pain, loss, grief, sadness, any hard emotion
Overthinking & hypervigilance
Pattern of unhealthy romantic relationships. Either get in too fast and disregard red flags or you push them away & self-sabotage
EMDR therapy is great for helping to overcome all of these issues. It is one of the most researched treatments for trauma out there.
Please note, EMDR therapy can be used for other things besides trauma treatment. It can also be used for anxiety treatment, struggles with motivation, grief, and more. In my practice since the focus is on trauma, this is what I will mostly focus on here.
EMDR therapy focuses on a three pronged approach by targeting your past, to help you in your present and future.
How the process actually works is in 8 phases. You can also check out my youtube video here which talks about the 8 phases of EMDR.
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During this phase, we will discuss your current struggles and how your past trauma might be showing up currently in your life. If you aren’t sure how your past and present are connected, that is ok! Most people are pretty clear on what they are currently having trouble with but can have a harder time making the connection with how it might be tied to their past trauma. And sometimes it can be tied to things you didn’t really even realize affecting you so much. Helping you figure all of this out is a big part of this phase and I will be there every step of the way.
In this phase, I am very careful about not going into too much detail about the traumatic events in your life as this can be re-traumatizing. This phase is more about figuring out what is back there and what we should target when it comes to EMDR. With EMDR and IMO any trauma work, we don’t want to target all the bad things that happened to you in the past, but only the things that are affecting you now in the present. The whole point is to help with your present symptoms and struggles, not just rehash your trauma.
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During this phase, we will make sure you feel safe and ready to move forward into the deeper waters of reprocessing your trauma. I equate it to I would never throw a kid into the deep end of the pool when they didn’t know how to swim but make sure they had a life jacket. I want you to have your life jacket. I want you to know what to do when you feel triggered. I want you to feel confident or at least mostly confident that if stuff comes up you can handle it in between sessions. Trauma work can be hard. You are opening boxes you maybe have never opened in your life. I want you to feel as prepared as you can be with tools and resources to keep your mind and body safe during this process.
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This phase starts the “reprocessing”. We will choose one traumatic event to work on, typically this is the oldest and most intense one but not always. Sometimes I start with a less intense one to help ease my clients into it. It really depends! We will talk about emotions associated with this event, negative beliefs, and check in with how your body feels.
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Then using bilateral stimulation as previously discussed we will start reprocessing this traumatic event. During online EMDR therapy, this will entail you initiating self-tapping (I will show you how to do this!). Each set will last about 15-30 seconds. After the set is over, I will invite you to take a deep breath, let it go, and then let me know what came up for you. When I ask you what came up for you, it can be anything. It can be a memory, a body sensation, a thought, an emotion, there is no wrong answer here. Then I will typically say, “ok, go with that” meaning to continue with the self-tapping and go back to reprocessing.
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Once the memory becomes neutral or less disturbing and your beliefs around the event change to more neutral or positive, we will work on “installing” or reprogramming the belief you would prefer to believe instead into your body and mind. We do this with more bilateral stimulation or self-tapping while holding on to the belief. We do this until you start to truly believe it and let it sink in fully.
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Since we know, “the body keeps the score” as Bessel Van Der Kolk has taught us, we can’t forget about the body. We will do a body scan where you tune into how your body feels, noticing if you have any unpleasant sensation, tightness, tension, or anything that is not supposed to be there. If so, we do more bilateral stimulation to help reprocess the trauma stored in your body. We do this until your body scan comes up clear.
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If the memory is neutral we close out the session. If the memory is still hot to the touch, even a little, we safely contain this memory by doing a container imagery exercise. Then we transition to some regulation and grounding to make sure you feel safe and ok to end the session. We can also discuss anything that came up during the session and what to do if feeling triggered at any point after the session.
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We will check in with your symptoms and continue to monitor the traumatic memory to see what has changed. We will talk about next steps and potentially moving on to others memories if one has been successfully “cleared” or no longer feels hot to the touch.
I use EMDR therapy with people who have complex trauma, PTSD, and generalized anxiety disorder in my practice.
With complex trauma, I began to notice the standard protocol didn’t work as well as with clients who had PTSD or generalized anxiety disorder. I sought advanced training through the Parnell Institute and took an attachment based EMDR training.
What I have found in my practice is attachment based EMDR works very well with complex trauma, particularly those with attachment wounds. Find more information on complex trauma online therapy HERE.
Find more information on attachment based trauma here: https://parnellemdr.com/
In my practice, clients who went through EMDR therapy often had great results.
Some of the ways EMDR helped my clients have been:
Feeling safe in relationships. Allowing someone to love them without self-sabotaging.
Healthier sex life. Sexual trauma can really mess up intimacy in lots of different ways. For some, they become hypersexual and for others they become asexual or not interested in it at all or completely turned off from it.
Trusting themselves in all things. Making decisions based on what they want vs what they think others want for them. Not having to poll everyone to make a decision.
Improved self-worth. Feeling more confident in themselves. No longer beating themselves up when they make mistakes.
When they think of their trauma, they feel ok. Not triggered. They know it is a part of them but they don’t feel as angry, sad, upset, etc. By it anymore. It doesn’t define them anymore.
Stable when it comes to their mood. No more low lows but when they get upset, it feels more manageable and they feel more in control of their emotions than feeling like their emotions control them.
I was trained in EMDR by the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs.
You can find more information on this program here: https://www.emdrhap.org/training/training-overview/
You can find more information on EMDR here: https://www.emdr.com/