Focused therapy to heal what has been hurt.
Compassionate EMDR therapy for Springfield and all across Missouri.
Your trauma is a part of your past. It doesn’t have to be your future.
You’ve tried basically everything you can think of to put what’s happened to you in the past. Maybe you’ve put all of your heart and soul into pushing it all into the farthest corners of your mind and your life, talked with the people in your support network for help, listened to podcasts and read all the books, or maybe even turned to your religious leadership and community. None of it has worked.
You have a sense of where all this trouble is coming from, but the nightmares, flashbacks, jumpiness, emotional whiplash, and high-key anxiety never fades away. It’s still too hard to talk about it, but you know you can’t keep what’s happened in a dark corner anymore.
You might ask yourself, “Why is nothing I’m doing to try and heal from this working?”
When nothing you’ve done works so far, you know it’s time to try something new. Newness might come with some anxiety, but you know that if you had some extra help from someone that gets it and won’t be scared away by what you’ve been through, you could do this. It might take some time, but it would be worth it.
It’s completely possible.
With tools like EMDR, you might even be able to start feeling relief and start creating the future you want for yourself sooner than you thought.
What if you could use your brain’s natural ability to heal to overcome your trauma? That’s EMDR!
EMDR can sound like some kind of new electronic dance music - The confusion makes sense! It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. In other words, we use specific eye movements or other sensations like touch and sound to take the pain out of traumatic memories and understand them in a new way.
EMDR works off of the assumption that your brain, like your body, naturally wants to heal. If you’ve ever gotten a cut or a scrape, you’ve seen how it scabs over and heals into fresh skin again. Sometimes it leaves a scar, but it’s still healed. Most of the time, our painful memories are like that - They bother us for a while, but over time it becomes nothing more than an unpleasant memory.
Traumatic memories are what happens when a cut or a scrape becomes infected. Something is blocking it from healing properly. So, it gets gross and pussy and inflamed.
EMDR is like taking a strong antibiotic and washing away all of the gross infection. For a brief time, it can be painful. But, in the long run, it saves you a great deal.
What to expect with EMDR:
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The start of the EMDR process looks a lot like other therapies - We work together to create a timeline of your overall history, in vague terms, and then collaborate on what goals you would like to reach.
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I’ll help you to develop some coping skills specific to EMDR that can help you calm down if things with your traumatic memories get tough. Then we figure out what memories you would like to work on, including negative beliefs you have associated with that memory and what you would like to believe instead.
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Time to process, or digest, the tough stuff. We’ll be using eye movements or other forms of sensation to help you bring up the memory while not going into a full flashback. We only stay with the memory for a short period of time. All you have to do during this process is tell me what you notice openly and honestly, and let your brain do what it needs to do.
My job is to help you through the processing and make sure that it’s safe. You have complete control of how the process goes, from when we start and stop to what memories we look at or set aside.
It can be hard to picture what a life after trauma would be like. But, imagine being able to:
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For example, going and finding friends and creating deeper connections because you know you deserve it and the people you’re talking to are trustworthy.
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You can actually get to and stay asleep without being plagued with nightmares. When you enter a new space, it’s easier to be in the moment and not be looking for the nearest exit. It’s a lot easier to handle the things that trigger you with a deep breath.
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You’re not wondering with dread if you’re going to die today or tomorrow. Planning for your future makes your heart skip a happy beat.
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Life will inevitably come with ups and downs. When something bad happens - A lost job, medical issues, fights with loved ones - it still hurts and is hard. But you don’t lose yourself to the stress, and even learn from the struggles.
EMDR can help you…
Reduce anxiety and stress around traumatic memories or future anxieties.
Transform unhelpful beliefs into ones that help you flourish.
Cut down the amounts and intensities of nightmares and flashbacks.
Create a new understanding of the difficult things you’ve experienced.
Strengthen your ability to handle life’s challenges.
FAQs
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A: Not at all! Here are some differences between hypnosis and EMDR:
Hypnotism puts you in a trance, while EMDR keeps you still connected to the present moment where you have autonomy and choice over the process.
EMDR doesn’t aim to put you in a state of relaxation. Instead, EMDR tried to help you move through painful emotions quickly.
EMDR is much more targeted, where we focus on specific issues. Hypnosis is often used to address a large amount of things at once.
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A: EMDR has been researched time and time again ever since its creation in the late 1980’s. This research has shown that EMDR is a useful tool to help people overcome trauma and PTSD, anxiety, and many other concerns. We don’t know exactly what happens in the brain when someone is undergoing EMDR, but there are lots of theories that it has to do with things similar to REM (dreaming) sleep and other brain mechanisms.
EMDR also works by targeting the pain at its source. No more coping skills to just “get through”. By looking at the painful memory that caused the problems, we often get rid of the things impacting us now.
If you would like to learn more, you can see the research at the Francine Shapiro Library, linked here: https://francineshapirolibrary.omeka.net/
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A: If this question is relevant to you, I am so sorry that you’ve had such a negative experience with EMDR. Know that if you never want to try it again, you are never obligated to! There are many ways to heal from trauma.
If you are interested in going through EMDR again, there might be several reasons why your past experience with it didn’t help or made it feel like things got worse. First, you might not have had a therapist that you trusted, who explained what to expect, prepared you properly, and helped you navigate the processing in a way that felt safe. The relationship between you and the therapist is even more important than the procedures of EMDR, so if that wasn’t there, then it might not have gone well. With a therapist that you trust who understands the protocol, you’re much more likely to have a more positive experience.
Second, you might not have been ready to undergo EMDR, or it’s just not for you for a variety of reasons. If you’re curious if you might want to try again, let’s schedule a consultation and get you into a first session to discuss this further in-depth!
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A: It’s natural to want to avoid traumatic memories. After all, they’re painful! The truth is, though, some level of bringing your trauma to the forefront is required to heal. Think of it like avoiding the dentist because of the fear of it, even though your tooth hurts so much. Only by dealing with it will we experience relief. It might be painful. However, we’ll take steps to keep you safe, such as developing specific coping skills and taking as long as we need to make sure you feel confident in using them when you need them. Also, if needed, we won’t touch the hardest memories first. We can start easier and work our way up. You have full say in how we do this process.
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A: There’s research that suggests that people can start experiencing relief as early as four sessions into the processing. However, depending on how long it takes to get to where you can use your coping skills effectively, how long it takes us to get through specific memories, how often we meet, and if we break up our EMDR sessions with talk therapy, EMDR can take a longer or shorter amount of time.
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A: Yes, you can! Many folks need to feel a sense of connection through having some sessions at least where they talk about their own inner world. And, sometimes, things in life come up where you need to pause your EMDR work. It all makes sense! Just know that the more we insert talk therapy into your overall treatment, the longer overall treatment will take.
