EMDR

You thought you overcame it.

Something really difficult happened in your past. Whether you call it a big trauma or a not-so-big deal, it still happened, and it hurt.

You thought you did the work to get through it. You shared about it, you journaled about it, and you talked about it in therapy before.

However, for some reason, when you return to it, the pain and guilt still feel overwhelming.

So, you do your best to never think about it.

You get triggered.

In seemingly unrelated situations, when you feel that pang of guilt, fear, or self-doubt, it’s as if your body returns to that moment in time.

You feel the same paralysis, or gut-wrenching anger, fear, or panic that you felt way back when that difficult thing happened.

Traditional talk therapy hasn’t worked to get you out of it.

Break free from the ‘stuckness.’

You think, “I know it wasn’t my fault, but I still feel like it was my fault.”

This happens because the way we store our memories is at the core of the issue.

In our earliest years, we did not have the capacity to understand we were not at fault for something bad that happened to us.

As an adult, you may know it, but the version of you that stores the memory does not.

EMDR can help you heal.

The process of EMDR does something that talk therapy alone can’t do. It’s a somatic therapy, meaning we will work on what you feel and sense in your body.

It also gets at our subconscious, something that cognitive therapy doesn’t do. We carry so many subconscious-blocking beliefs that hold us back, and EMDR can help unblock those.

We use bilateral stimulation to process your trauma, a way to re-encode memories in your body.

In EMDR, we will cut through the trauma over a few sessions (and again for different memories) and re-imagine and re-code some important insights to help free you from the pain.

Imagine how life can feel different.

Imagine a world in which you no longer have the thought, “Why did I do that?” “Why did I just lose it at my friend, colleague, spouse, etc.”

Imagine one where you are in control of your reactions, where you no longer get angry or upset over things that aren’t yours to carry, and where you are able to put space between yourself and other people’s reactions and behaviors.

Imagine one where you now not only understand why you are triggered into irritability, rage, fear or sadness, but are able to mitigate it and remain peaceful not just outside but internally as well.

Contact me at (813) 501-2169 for a free 15-minute consultation to start your path to healing today.

EMDR Therapy: Questions and Answers About How It Works and What It Helps With

What is EMDR therapy and how does it work?
EMDR is a trauma-focused therapy that helps your brain finally process experiences that felt overwhelming, scary, or too much to deal with at the time. When something stressful or traumatic happens, the brain sometimes stores it with maladaptive information: “I’m not good enough, it’s my fault, etc.” The images, emotions, or body sensations stay stuck with negative core beliefs and can get triggered again later.

In EMDR, we use bilateral stimulation (usually eye movements or tapping) to help the brain do what it’s designed to do: move those memories into a more resolved, integrated place. You don’t erase the memory. It just stops feeling so raw, intense, or activating.

Most people describe EMDR as feeling surprisingly natural. You talk less than you would in traditional therapy, and you don’t have to go into detail or retell the entire story for it to work. Over time, the emotional charge around the memory reduces, and you gain a sense of clarity, calm, and distance from what happened. Many clients say things like, “It still happened, but it doesn’t run my life anymore.”

What does EMDR help with?
EMDR helps with symptoms of acute trauma, such as nightmares, avoidance, or dissociative episodes related to a traumatic event. EMDR therapy can also help us better manage our automatic reactions: when you are filled with rage in the checkout line when the customer ahead of you is going slow, when we are filled with guilt or worse – shame, for something that isn’t ours to carry, or when your defensiveness gets triggered to the point that you can no longer hear your loving partner. Many of our reactions happen on auto-pilot and come from a subconscious place, so talk therapy alone will not help.

Does EMDR work for anxiety?
Absolutely, EMDR can be incredibly helpful with anxiety. My specialty is working with women in midlife who deal with high anxiety in the form of overwhelm, overthinking, and over functioning. When we are in that space we tend to intellectualize and pack our calendars with productive tasks so that we can avoid actually feeling our feelings. Talk therapy can only go so far since the problem doesn’t lie in conscious awareness, if it did we could logic our way out of it. I prefer to use a somatic therapy like EMDR as part of my work with clients with anxiety.