If you are experiencing nightmares, flash-backs, feeling excessively jumpy and are easily triggered as a result of a traumatic event in your past, you could be experiencing symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Typical traumas are around events such as accidents, assaults, natural disasters or muggings.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a form of therapy that has excellent outcomes in helping alleviate trauma symptoms. It can also be used to address current difficulties caused by early-attachment-trauma – in other words, wounding caused by relationships in early childhood.
EMDR is based on the idea that negative thoughts, feelings and behaviours are the result of unprocessed memories. Our minds tend to lock these memories away as a way of protecting us. However, in doing so, it also locks in the strong emotions and physical reactions we had at the time too. When this content leaks into our conscious minds, it can feel as though we are reliving the actual trauma again.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye rapid movement or hand tapping, to access these memories in a way that allows the mind to file them in the same way our non-traumatic memories are stored. This processing of the traumatic memories allows us to lose the strong emotional and physical responses that have always been attached to them.
By targeting your past experience, current triggers, and future potential challenges. EMDR can help lift symptoms you may be experiencing in the present. It can also help decrease or eliminate distress associated with the past, and help create a future free of anticipated triggers.
Here’s the difference a course of EMDR therapy made to this client:
“When I came to you I was nothing short of a broken man, having gone through some of the most difficult and psychologically traumatic experiences I could imagine. You listened to me and did not judge, you were patient and understanding. Most of all you showed me I could put my life back together and for this I will be forever in your debt.”
The client who wrote the above, wrote a book after finishing therapy with me. He asked me to write the foreword to his now published book. It’s a truly inspiring account and is available on Amazon.
See more client comments here.
IM Listening Therapist 