Trauma Treatment and Recovery
Experience the power of EMDR to help you get unstuck
On a very personal note, I can not say enough about EMDR. It completely changed the course of my own life at a very difficult time of stress, grief, and vicarious trauma.
On a professional level, it is a treatment modality that I’m deeply committed to providing and honored to facilitate. While I am able to facilitate traditional EMDR sessions, as a Board Certified Art Therapist (ATR-BC), I can also combine the power of art therapy to assist you in improving coping skills by engaging in the creative process and to process and honor your unique experiences, especially when words are difficulty to find.
Does online EMDR work as well?
Yes and there is emerging research that proves it! I’ve been offering online EMDR since the pandemic and my clients have had tremendous results. And the options have only continued to improve. I now use BilateralStimulation.io which allows me to control the stimulus remotely giving you the same experience as in person! I can even send you (or if you’d like your own you can purchase them here) tactile buzzers!
What is EMDR?
Clients I work with may have:
✔️Experienced or witnessed traumatic events including prolonged childhood neglect or trauma (sometimes called Complex PTSD)
✔️ Experienced or witnessed medical trauma such as enduring intense medical procedures, memories from painful or prolonged treatments like those experienced during cancer or burn treatment, life-threatening medical emergencies leading to new diagnoses, multiple surgeries and recoveries, and memories of being mistreated or de-humanized during medical treatment
✔️ Suffered a birth trauma (see definition here)
✔️ Experienced religious or spiritual trauma (sometimes referred to as Religious Trauma Syndrome based on research from psychologist Marlene Windell)
✔️ Other distressing memories or events which have led to self-limiting beliefs, anxiety, depression, fears, or phobias
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. EMDR is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many different treatment approaches. To date, EMDR therapy has helped millions of people of all ages relieve many types of psychological stress. It combines the use of bilateral or dual stimulus stimulation with a structured 8 phase treatment protocol. For more specifics, please visit EMDRIA.
8 Phases of Treatment
The amount of time and number of sessions needed will depend upon the history of each client. The goal of EMDR therapy is to process completely the experiences from the past that are causing problems today. Traumatic events and memories sometimes do not get stored properly in the brain. These memories, along with the original terror, fear, sadness, or anxiety, then surface in moments that may not make sense or may cause abnormally high levels of daily distress (anxiety, panic attacks, difficulty sleeping, nightmares, flashbacks, etc).
Phases 1 & 2
During Phase 1, a thorough history and assessment is done by the therapist for the purpose of developing a targeted treatment plan. Once the treatment plan is established, we will begin Phase 2, the Preparation Phase, which assists clients in developing effective coping skills to reduce stress, calm emotional dysregulation, and more effectively deal with current symptoms. This is an important part of preparing for the remaining phases and lays the foundation for healing.
Phases 3-8
For each of the main target memories, we work through phases 3-8 until symptoms have resolved for each one. Each memory is processed, negative beliefs connected to the memories dismantled, and stronger, positive beliefs around the event installed. This process helps the memories to be stored in the appropriate place in the brain and aids in the reduction of distressing symptoms. This part repeats until the client feels their symptoms are resolved.