EMDR therapy helps you get past the trauma.
The flashy-light therapy, the wiggle-a-finger-in-front-of-your eyes therapy, the buzzy-things-in-your-hands therapy, the beeps-in-your-ears therapy – these all could have been names for Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
EMDR is one of the better-known trauma therapies for a good reason – it has helped many people put past trauma to rest and get through other tough things, too.
EMDR involves bilateral or two-sided stimulation of the brain, which we achieve in the ways mentioned above. We combine this with imagining difficult memories.
Why does EMDR therapy work?
Like many things in science and medicine, we don’t know why EMDR works; we simply know that it does.
Some people think it works similar to how REM sleep, or the dream stage of sleep, helps us process things that have happened to us while we are awake. There are similarities in the eye movements for both.
Others think that bilateral stimulation is a way to regulate the nervous system and allow you to think about the difficult memories or pain in a state in which you are relaxed, which builds various physiological associations with the memory.
Regardless of why, we know through many studies and confirmation from clients that EMDR helps many people recover from trauma.
EMDR therapy helps with trauma and PTSD.
In addition to addressing PTSD, where someone has suffered an exceptionally threatening or violating event, EMDR is especially helpful in managing painful memories that are not causing full-blown PTSD symptoms.
For instance, EMDR can be useful for bullying, workplace intimidation, emotional abuse, relationships with narcissistic partners, and many other issues.
EMDR is also especially helpful in working with trauma that you do not remember clearly. People rarely have clear memories of traumatic events they have suffered because the brain protects us from these memories or the events happened when they were quite young. If you have even a fragment of a memory of a traumatic event, EMDR may be a good fit for you.
In EMDR, we can access these memories in ways that other therapies cannot. Once accessed, we can then reprocess them so healing can occur. Reprocessing means changing how we think about the memories and bringing in rational information and facts that are usually not accessible to when one’s trauma response is activated.
EMDR provides relief for chronic pain.
EMDR is beneficial for chronic pain because pain often comes from trauma, and the results of pain can be traumatic. When we can reduce the fear response, pain experiences tend to improve as well.
Through EMDR, you learn to confront the sensation involved in pain with the added benefit of the calming state that bilateral stimulation often produces.
In conjunction with other psychotherapy types, EMDR can be an essential component of therapy for chronic pain.
Does EMDR therapy work online?
EMDR works quite well for treating PTSD online, and I have completed EMDR for online PTSD treatment many times. The results are comparable to in-person therapy, but with the added convenience of being in one’s own personal space.
During a telehealth appointment for EMDR, I will send you a link using bilaterial stimulation.io that gives you access to the visual and audio signals needed for EMDR processing during your online appointment. You can do EMDR from home this way. I provide EMDR therapy online in Minnesota and in North Dakota.
Gain relief from the trauma and pain plaguing you.
For EMDR therapy to be successful, you must be able to bring yourself back into a calm state of mind after discussing the memory of the trauma or experiencing the pain.
Many people who have experienced trauma do not have this ability when they start therapy, and that’s okay.
We will work together to help you gain these skills since they are essential not only for participating in this kind of therapy but also in life.
If EMDR sounds intriguing, fill out the contact form below to schedule your free 15-minute consultation to see if I am the right EMDR therapist in St. Paul, MN for you.