Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapeutic tool which helps people heal from the symptoms and emotional distress resulting from disturbing life experiences. This includes “Big T” traumas - which are any situation where one’s life or safety is threatened, and “Little T” traumas - which are more minor, but still disturbing events.
Trauma counseling using EMDR helps the brain heal from psychological trauma like the body does from physical trauma. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health, but when there is a block or imbalance, the emotional wound can’t heal. EMDR activates the brain’s natural healing processes and creates movement toward change.
EMDR therapy helps merge the leftover remnants of trauma: the associated sights, sounds, emotions and physical sensations and move them into long-term memory. The event(s) happened then and are now perceived as then in the brain. When this happens, it desensitizes the negative influence of the trauma in the present.
Counseling with EMDR also helps resolve negative beliefs. Unconscious beliefs that drive dysfunction like, “I am not safe,” “People can’t be trusted,” “I am a bad person,” etc., are reprocessed into healthy beliefs.
