EMDR 

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapy model that allows people to more rapidly process past trauma and negative thoughts and emotions. EMDR is especially effective for treating PTSD, severe anxiety, and processing past painful events.

 

It is a brain-based therapy, in that it looks at the way the brain processes and stores memories both emotionally and logically. Naturally our brains store emotional memory in one part of the brain, and cognitive-based memories in another. The EMDR approach essentially bridges the gap which is what speeds the recovery process.

 

EMDR has been effective in the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This disorder normally develops after the direct experience or witnessing a terrifying event. Events including combat, terrorist attacks, serious accidents, or sexual abuse are among the most common events experienced, where the individual’s life or the life of someone else may have threatened or placed at risk for a serious injury. Individuals suffering from PTSD can have persistent and recurring memories, nightmares, tension, sensitivity, intense emotional reactions. Individuals attempt to avoid distressing circumstances or even talking about traumatic events. If left unattended, symptoms may last years but the disorder is generally diagnosed at 6 months after the event.  

 

EMDR can help individuals explore these events in a safe therapeutic space while desensitizing their emotional reactivity to the event. This can be done through various tools incorporated by therapists to address and reprocess our body and mind’s reaction to the event. In the majority of cases, trauma is stored in our body and psyche causing us to react to similar events in the future. A loud noise experienced in the present, may remind those suffering with PTSD of a previously experienced explosive blast which has been stored in their memory. Unfortunately, they don’t store the memory the same way that healthy individuals may normally do. Most individuals know how to compertanilize the different noise to a different setting, to a different timeline. PTSD sufferers essentially can’t store the memory in a safe and organized location. EMDR attempts to help individuals reprocess these experiences and properly organize what our brain was unable to do at the time of the event. 

If you are looking to work with an EMDR therapist, please select Priscilla Torres, Maria Rivas, or Dulce Martinez on the booking schedule platform to begin working with them.