What is EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. 

The process utilizes the natural healing ability of your body, similar to REM (rapid eye movement) during sleep. We can also use different bilateral movements, such as hand held tappers, manual "butterfly tapping," or through bilateral sound.

After assessment and history taking, you will be asked specific questions about a particular disturbing memory. Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated by asking you to watch the light bar moving back and forth across your visual field. Sometimes, headphones or tappers are used instead. You will then be asked to report back on the experiences you have noticed during these sets. 

Most of the time your body manages new information without conscious awareness. When something out of the ordinary or overwhelming occurs, or when you are routinely subjected to distress, your natural coping mechanisms can become overloaded. This can result in disturbing experiences becoming "stuck" in the limbic system of the brain in an emotional form, rather than in a coherent narrative.

Experiences during a session may include changes in thoughts, images, and feelings. With repeated sets of eye movements, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses its painful intensity and simply becomes a neutral memory of an event in the past. Other associated memories may also heal at the same time. This linking of related memories can lead to dramatic and rapid improvement in many aspects of your life.

The limbic brain maintains traumatic memories in a network associated with emotions and physical sensations, which are disconnected from the brain's cortex where we use language to store memories. The limbic system's traumatic memories can be triggered when you experience events similar to the challenging ones you have been through. Often the memory itself is no longer in conscious awareness, but the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger, or despair manifest in the present.

In addition to the treatment of PTSD, EMDR has successfully been used to treat anxiety and panic attacks, depression, stress, complicated grief, chronic pain, self-esteem and performance anxiety.

High levels of dissociation require a higher level of treatment than I offer. Epilepsy and other conditions may be contraindicated for using the lightbar.

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