EMDR Therapy
EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) therapy focuses on trauma. Developed in the late 1980s, EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, auditory tones, or tactile pulses) to help the nervous system integrate and metabolize lots of information very quickly. In essence, it jump-starts your brain, and entire body really, to stitch together many, many fragmented pieces of trauma memory.
Why does this help?
First, disturbing things happen to all of us. We don’t always think we’ve been traumatized – in fact, we often downplay our feelings about negative events. But if something sticks with us, triggers negative beliefs about ourselves (e.g., “I’m a failure”), there’s some level of trauma there. But that sort of memory (e.g., “what happened that night”) doesn’t always get stored like everyday memory. It’s often splattered throughout the nervous system in the form of anxiety, anger, shame, and thoughts about ourselves that feel miserable.
EMDR takes these splattered bits of memory and pulls them into a coherent whole. Quickly . . . Sometimes before a client even realizes it. When bits of trauma, like thoughts and emotions, are integrated in this way, they lose their power to make us panic or hate ourselves – the anxiety drops out of them and the memories can simply be filed away.
EMDR is a whole-body process, yet is non-invasive and gentle. And EMDR can be used to treat everything from panic attacks to relationship problems. I even use it to help students, professionals, and artists do better at the things they love to do.
EMDR THERAPY BLOGS
Religious Trauma into Soul Healing, Part V: Energetic Healing
Energetic Healing = Body + Energy + Trauma Therapy As a psychology student in the 90s, I heard the message: Don't mess with spirituality. We can't measure it. It's private. But now, a tsunami of change is sweeping the therapy world . . . and this change is...
Moving from Religious Trauma into Soul Healing, Part IV: Diverse Friendships
Friends Who are Different and a Little Bit Scary Make Us Grow Unexpected friendship teaches us, like nothing else. When I arrived at Texas Woman's University in 1990, I found myself immersed in growth and diversity. I suddenly had gay and lesbian friends, after...
Moving from Religious Trauma into Soul Healing, Part III: Beauty
Never lose an opportunity of seeing something beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting. -Ralph Waldo Emerson Beauty is the basis of my spiritual discovery process. I found the Anglican church on a trip to England, back in '07, a time of big transition....
Moving from Religious Trauma into Soul Healing, Part II: Meditation
What is Meditation? Meditation trains our minds to focus on the present moment, to be aware of our thoughts and feelings, and to observe our whole experience in a mindful way. It's any practice that fosters mindfulness. I've practiced daily meditation for the...
Moving from Religious Trauma into Soul Healing, Part I
How do we turn religious trauma into deep emotional healing? Religious trauma happens most often in movements that are fundamentalist in nature - or, "Strong Religion." In my practice, I see adults who grew up scared of sinning and going to hell or disappointing God...
Our Flaws Make Us Interesting: EMDR Makes Them Funny
Maybe our flaws even make us lovable. My Flaws I have a few characteristics of which I’m not proud. Most of them fall into the category of "uptightness" . . . fear and shame and rigidity. Before EMDR, I would not have written this post for fear of public ridicule....
Listen to ReConceive: a Healing Podcast
ReConceive: a Podcast about All Kinds of Healing My dear friend, Melissa Sundwall, a great therapist who also happens to be a lot younger than me, says: “Let’s do a podcast.” And I say, “What’s a podcast?” That literally happened. About a year ago. So we teamed...
Joy Lessons from my 5-year-old Niece
Lessons from Linde I recently took a road trip with my sister and her kids. While we drove and swam and hiked and visited, I got a good dose of anti-depressant wisdom from my five-year-old niece. Linde inspires me because she is full of joy and incredibly herself: no...
“I’m unattractive & I Don’t Deserve Love”: Change Negative Beliefs with EMDR
I have a few Negative Beliefs . . . I did some dumb things in my teens. I backed the family car out of the driveway, into our neighbor’s car (which had exited his driveway a second ahead of mine). I waited tables at a church banquet and spilled iced tea down the back...
Denial, repression, and how to keep from losing your mind
I’ve always had a fear of dementia. It started on a visit to my great grandfather in the nursing home and I heard him mistake his daughter (my grandmother) for someone named Betty. Fifteen years later, the same thing started happening to my grandmother and I watched...
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