Trauma / EMDR

EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an incredibly effective treatment created by Dr. Francine Shapiro in the 1990s for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and trauma. Since this time, EMDR has been adapted to treat a range of issues, such as depression, anxiety, and negative beliefs we hold about ourselves that create distress in our lives. EMDR is an efficient therapy, in that it generally shortens the length of time in treatment dramatically.

EMDR treatment involves bilateral stimulation, often in the form of rapid eye movements and targets the way trauma is stored in the brain so that our current day symptoms, most often created by past trauma, can finally resolve.

Many people minimize the traumatic nature of their past, perhaps having learned to cope somehow with what happened. I very often hear client remark that an event happened so long ago, it couldn’t possibly still be affecting them negatively all these years later. This is often because of how a person defines what trauma is and how it is stored in our brains.

Trauma doesn’t know time. To the brain, it is as if the traumatic event that happened 20 years ago is still happening, thereby continuing to negatively affect our current day lives.