What is Trauma?

"Trauma" can often feel like an intimidating word. However, I define trauma as anything that changes the way we see ourselves as people or how we see the world around us.  Traumas can be large or small, overt actions or messages, or subtly compounding hurts over years. We often discount traumas but they impact our day to day approaches and responses or reactions to life. Traumas can skew us be negative and overly fearful. This in fact though uncomfortable, is our amazing internal mammalian wiring attempting to protect us from future threat and hurt. Our response to traumas are actually quite brilliant. The problem with trauma is that it often is no longer accurately representative of the actual world around us.  This is where EMDR therapy comes in.

What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a treatment modality that enables us to heal from the symptoms of troubling or traumatic life experiences.  EMDR can be beneficial when we have a pervasive belief caused by a single or repeated "trauma" that holds us back. This may be a negative belief such as "I'm not good enough", "I'm damaged" or "I don't deserve..." This is a negative belief that those around us would argue is irrational or doesn't match reality. The EMDR process connects the personal negative belief we hold along side images or examples of when it has appeared for us most intensely in our lives. We connect these memories and themes with the associated emotions and physical sensation surrounding the belief. Through bilateral stimulation of the brain (either eye movements or vibrating hand paddles), we then allow our more primitive feeling brain the opportunity to talk.  Once our hurt self is invited to speak, we can hold those experiences against reality in the here and now.

When we simply "talk" about our traumas, our highly analytical "smart" brain often tries to talk us out of those negative feelings. This "re-experiencing" of the events or negative feelings during EMDR systematically takes us through a less guarded process so we can genuinely reset ourselves.  EMDR asks you to walk into your sadness.  This may be scary, but what you will find, is that it's always been sitting inside of you.  It's an app that is open in the background of your body and brain, just draining your battery. I will ask you to be courageous and I won't leave your side.