EMDR and Trauma Recovery

“I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”
– C. G. Jung

Trauma takes more than time to heal.

People who have experienced the heavy impact of trauma may read the above quote and want to laugh or cry.

Some of us have been through challenging and painful experiences. Whenever we encounter a situation in life that reminds us of it, it throws us into a highly disruptive and painful cycle.

We may find ourselves doing anything to avoid thinking about those events and the feelings that come with those thoughts.

Trauma causes us to create all sorts of coping behaviors; some are healthy – some not so healthy.

How do we make that above quote ring true?

We want to control our reactions and responses.

We want to deal with our pain and heal.

The idea of keeping the past in the past and rediscovering our ability to self-determine sounds wonderful. How do we go about doing this?

The right approach makes all the difference.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an empirically validated form of trauma recovery. The specifics involve eight phases of treatment, making it challenging to explain EMDR succinctly. Here’s how I describe EMDR to my clients:

Imagine that your memories are like clay. We experience an event, and we form beliefs about ourselves, others, and the world, and the clay becomes hardened and stored in our minds in what feels like a permanent state.

EMDR makes that previously hardened clay soft and moldable again. We create a safe and stable environment in the therapy room so that you can talk about whatever part of your experience you feel comfortable bringing up.

I am not interested in flooding my clients with exposure therapy to the worst parts of their experiences and calling that trauma recovery. Instead, I work with whatever part of their story they want to bring up and trust that we will take this bit by bit, allowing them to know what parts they are ready to process.

Discover the reality of that quote.

Trauma recovery is one of my favorite parts of this job precisely because people discover the quote at the top of this page is true. I get to see that quote played out right before my eyes.

If you experience trauma symptoms and want to be at peace with your past and feel hopeful for the future, please reach out for a free consultation.