Trauma Healing with EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a powerful evidence based treatment to help individuals heal from traumatic or distressing life experiences, depression, anxiety and more.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a trauma resolution method.
In the days, months, and years following the trauma, you may struggle to open up about your trauma and start the healing process. Experiencing a traumatic event shocks your system and has a major toll on your mental and physical health. Negative thoughts can flood your brain and result in a spike of symptoms, such as shock, denial, fear, or anxiety.​
EMDR encourages your brain to resolve and reprocess traumatic events.
Unresolved trauma can make you feel like you’re reliving a stressful or frightening event again and again. EMDR helps you safely reprocess traumatic events and memories by encouraging communication between different areas of brain that deal with trauma. This therapy modality will help eliminate a stress response when you recall the event or are exposed to triggers.
Opening up trauma can be painful. ​
Healing unresolved trauma can feel like opening a wound. With EMDR, you always remain in full control of the process. EMDR is a unique therapy that is best introduced when you’re ready for this step in your healing journey
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The Eight Phases of EMDR Therapy
1. History and Treatment Planning
This phase involves understanding your unique experiences and current struggles.
We’ll start by discussing your personal history and the events that have been troubling you. This helps me understand your needs and create a plan for the therapy. Together, we’ll identify specific memories or experiences that you want to work on, and I'll help you prioritize them based on what feels most urgent or distressing.
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2. Preparation
In this phase, we’ll build trust and create a safe space for you to heal.
We’ll go over how the EMDR process works, address concerns and questions, and set expectations. You’ll learn relaxation and grounding techniques to help cope with emotional disturbances that may arise.
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3. Assessment
We’ll identify the specific memories and related negative beliefs you want to work on.
Together, we’ll choose a target memory or experience that we’ll focus on. We’ll also identify the negative belief that you may hold about yourself related to this memory, like ‘I’m not safe’ or ‘I’m unworthy.’ We’ll then create a positive belief to replace that negative one, such as ‘I am safe now’ or ‘I am worthy of love and respect. We will establish initial measures as baselines before reprocessing: Subjective Units of Distress (SUD) and Validity of Cognition (VOC).We’ll identify the specific memories and related negative beliefs you want to work on.
4. Desensitization
This phase focuses on reprocessing the troubling memory with the help of bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, auditory, or tactile)
During this phase, you’ll recall the memory while following the moving dot with your eyes or using another form of bilateral stimulation. The goal is to allow your brain to process and "rewire" the memory, so it no longer triggers the same intense emotions or distressing thoughts.
5. Installation
We’ll strengthen the positive belief that you want to adopt.
Once the memory is less distressing, we’ll focus on the positive belief that we identified earlier. Through further bilateral stimulation, we’ll help your brain reinforce and integrate that positive belief, so you can begin to truly believe it.
6. Body Scan
This phase helps release any remaining physical tension or discomfort connected to the memory.
After focusing on the memory and the positive belief, we’ll check in with your body to see if there’s any tension or discomfort left. If there is, we’ll use more bilateral stimulation to process any lingering disturbance from the body with dual attention bilateral stimulation.
7. Closure
We’ll ensure that you leave each session feeling stable and grounded
At the end of the session, I’ll assist in returning you to a state of calm in the present moment whether the reprocessing is complete or not. Reprocessing of an event is complete when the client feels neutral, the positive belief feels completely true, and the body is completely clear of disturbance.
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8. Reevaluation
We’ll check in on your progress and ensure lasting change.
"At the start of each new session, we’ll discuss the recently processed memories we’ve worked on to ensure that distress is still low and positive cognition is strong. We’ll explore future targets and directions for continued treatment are determined.