EMDR Therapy for women in Davis & online in California
Have you found that you are living your life but at times feel stuck, like you keep repeating the same behaviors, or falling into the same pattern or response to a difficult situation? And sometimes your responses to stress are healthy: You gather support around you, get extra rest and eat well, do things that bring you comfort. Other times it’s not as healthy, like finding yourself short-tempered, engaging in risky behavior or beating yourself up for the things you do or the person you are. We can have varied responses to trauma or difficult things that happen to us. It’s when these responses are unhealthy that it’s time to get some help. And I am here with that help…
EMDR
When we talk about trauma this includes everything from a distressing or difficult situation to feeling like you or a loved one is in danger and/or life is threatened. Trauma in all forms is a wound in your brain, a wound that needs healing. That healing can come through a therapy technique called EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing therapy. EMDR is evidence based and a highly researched technique for trauma. It draws on your brain’s ability to heal itself through a series of steps that gently move old memories and experiences from one part of your brain where you feel literally stuck to another part of your brain that can manage all of this more effectively and healthily through reprocessing that memory.
Why do I feel the way I do?
To understand this therapy more, it helps to know a bit about your brain. When something distressing occurs, the theory is the memory of that event gets stuck in a part of the brain where the fight or flight response lives-the limbic system. This response is a survival response, designed to help you ward off danger or threats. Unfortunately, sometimes when you experience something traumatic that memory never moves over to the neocortex where it can be properly processed. Instead, it stays in fight or flight so every time you experience something later that is reminiscent of that old experience it feels like you are reliving it over and over again. Your body is constantly keeping watch and readying to ward off threat. So you feel a variety of emotions and body sensations like you’re in fight or flight: heart racing, rapid breathing, chest tightness, worry, spiraling anxiety, etc. It’s uncomfortable, painful and can be debilitating. But together we can use EMDR to help you get unstuck and able to live your life with peace and comfort.
How EMDR works…
The way we move those memories from one part of the brain to the other is through bilateral stimulation. When you sleep your brain goes through a REM cycle and your eyes move back and forth rapidly and memories are sorted. It’s thought that when something traumatic occurs this memory sorting process doesn’t happen and therefore gets stuck in part of your brain. EMDR mimics that process with creating bilateral stimulation either through rapid eye movements back and forth, tapping your chest, shoulders, or knees, and sounds or music that alternates in each ear. This bilateral stimulation works to desensitize the painful memory or event and then move it to where it needs to be in your brain.
The Phases of EMDR Therapy
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In the first phase of EMDR, we identify themes and patterns of responses to difficult and stressful situations. It might be what originally brought you to therapy or something you note wanting to work on or change. This becomes our target for reprocessing. Then we look at the beliefs you hold about yourself related to these stuck points, stressors or distressing events. EMDR works to not only desensitize your response to what we’ve chosen to reprocess so you no longer feel like you are in fight or flight, but it also changes how you feel about yourself related to what we are targeting.
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This second phase is when I teach you techniques to help with coping that you can use both in and outside of our sessions. These resources include a variety of visualizations, guided imagery, and relaxation techniques. We also try out the various options for bilateral stimulation to find the one that works best for you.
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Here we decide what our target memory or event will be from what we identified in Phase 1. One of the many things people love about EMDR is that it doesn’t require a client to describe in detail the traumatic event they are reprocessing. Instead, you are asked to picture the image that represents the worst part of what we are reprocessing, and you tell me just the “headline” of what you are seeing. It is this image that you hold in your mind while we use the bilateral stimulation. I also ask you to identify the negative belief you hold about yourself related to this event and the positive belief you want to have instead.
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We start the bilateral stimulation and I cue you to notice the image, negative belief, and any emotions and/or physical sensations you are experiencing in response to the target memory. And this is where your brain works its magic and your response to the target starts to change. We pause for you to take notice of thoughts, linked memories, sensations or emotions and then these are incorporated into the desensitization with me cueing you what to do each step of the way. We move at your pace and start this process when you feel ready.
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Here your brain engages its natural healing process. The target memory is gently pulled through the brain from the limbic system to the neocortex where it can be properly managed and reprocessed to no longer cause you pain and ignite that fight or flight response. While it will not erase the memories of the past, it will not feel like you are still living through that experience. We replace the negative belief you previously held and install a positive belief in its place. We scan through your body for any residual negative sensations related to the target and clear those out as well through continued bilateral stimulation.
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Immediately following desensitization and reprocessing we debrief our session and how you feel about the process. It’s a chance to reflect as well as return to the present. We will always include a resource from the 2nd phase to end our session with calm and feeling grounded. In the subsequent session we recheck the target to ensure it’s held and plan for future sessions. It’s also a time to discuss anything that has come up in between sessions which may connect with our work.
There can be so many painful experiences and various forms of trauma that occur throughout the process of becoming a mother. Fortunately, EMDR has applicability for all the clients I see in my practice. It is a process that we will take at your pace and if and when you feel ready. It is also something that lends itself well to being done in online therapy so my clients who do virtual sessions can take advantage of this technique too.