Releasing Trauma with EMDR

Fear can help you get out of danger, but…

It can overtake your world. Your “fight or flight” system can be completely irrational, kicking in at inappropriate times to keep you safe and ALIVE.

Our brains haven’t evolved much since our ancestors were trying to survive being chased by saber-toothed tigers. Except now, the fear is a fight with a spouse, a stranger on an elevator, or too many people at a crowded mall. Sometimes, we don’t even know why we were set off.

Constantly reliving the past, you become hypervigilant in the present. Your past pain is etched in your brain, keeping you on high alert. You might respond irrationally or out of proportion when certain things trigger that old fear response.

There are many causes and forms of trauma.

It’s not just gunshots, assaults, or war. Maybe you’ve never used the word “trauma” to describe what you’ve been through. Emotional, physical, and sexual abuse; violence; and natural disasters are all traumatic.

Any traumatic event can disrupt your nervous system and plague you with long-term residual effects.

Our senses flood us often, leaving us incapable of dealing with our present challenges. And when our minds and bodies react based on pain incurred in the past, our ability to have successful relationships and careers is compromised.

Unless you go into the memory network and reprocess what happened, you can perpetually relive that trauma.

That’s where EMDR comes in.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a safe, effective therapy for helping you work through past trauma.

When our brain encounters a new situation, it asks, “Have we done this before?” “Have I been in this situation before?” “How did I manage before?” It keeps looking for old records to ‘remember’ how to react.

We used to think brains and their function didn’t change much. But we’ve since learned that due to “plasticity,” brains can learn new tricks. We can train your brain to react differently to old information. And when your mind changes, your body’s responses change, too.

Using a combination of EMDR, mindfulness, and meditation, we can reach back and calm what has become dysregulated, changing old patterns and thoughts.

Here’s how it works…

Following trauma, stress remains heightened, even after you’re safe from the event. But due to an error in how the nervous system encodes this information in the brain, it confuses normal stressful situations as intense threats, putting your body in a very aroused state.

EMDR helps you reprocess those memories. It allows your nervous system to let go of the “tags” it created around the event – those markers that cause it to overreact to protect you from those events in the future.

The reprocessing takes place using bilateral stimulation, which taps into both sides of the brain’s ability to apply the parasympathetic system’s calming effects to calm the sympathetic system’s overactive response. It’s similar to what happens during normal sleep’s rapid eye movement phase. This process should not be confused with other modalities like immersion therapy or hypnosis, which are very different.

The therapist facilitates the process, using the body’s innate ability to heal itself. Once we reprocess those old memories, they’re sorted in a healthy way, and life can move on. Rather than triggering you, making you re-experience the trauma, the memories lose their charge – like they’re just another event that happened in the past.

You CAN change how you react.

Amazing results have come from the use of EMDR in a therapeutic setting.

YOU can get results, too!

It’s time to stop being a hostage to the past. You’ve given up too much peace and good stuff to wait longer.

Let’s get your life back!

Call me and we will talk about how you can move on: (832) 510-0373.