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Painful memories can’t be erased and forgotten, but you can process and let go of the disturbance they carry. You don’t have to carry the heavy energy of the past with you. There’s freedom in letting go.

What Is EMDR?

Talking about painful memories or trauma may not be enough. This is when Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, can be so helpful. EMDR is a therapy modality that helps process blocked, subconscious, and disturbing information, allowing your body-mind to release it. It targets your thoughts, feelings, negative beliefs, and body sensations at the same time. It accesses your right brain and integrates it with your left brain. It helps you process everything not only cognitively and emotionally but also somatically. EMDR focuses on your past, present, and future, unlike many other modalities that only focus on one at a time.

EMDR Therapy Benefits

How EMDR Works

EMDR is a form of therapy that helps to reprocess memories, images, beliefs, feelings, and body sensations safely. The goal is to take advantage of our brain’s ability to rewire, also known as neuroplasticity, to rewrite memories with self-awareness and new positive associations. EMDR works by using bilateral stimulation. Usually done by guided eye movement, tapping, or pulsing, these techniques activate both sides of your brain, further aiding in reprocessing and rewiring the events explored. Traumatic events will be replaced with neutral/positive associations and coping skills. Eventually, the hope is for you to be able to think of these events as in the past, while feeling safe in your present self. Our brain has the ability to reprocess and rewrite our past memories through a process called neuroplasticity. EMDR is a wonderful tool to aid in trauma processing and healing.

EMDR Therapy Benefits

EMDR processes the trauma memories from dysfunctional to functional. It makes your pain not personal, but objective. It decreases the emotional charge of what happened. It integrates the fragmented parts of you, making you whole. Whole, how you should have been all along. EMDR can assist in your ability to cope with stressors, improve your self-esteem, reduce panic attacks, and assist with personal growth.

Attachment-Focused EMDR

Attachment-focused EMDR is EMDR with a focus on attachments, or the attachments people form with their primary caregivers in childhood. It combines attachment theory and EMDR in a way that addresses these childhood wounds and allows you to heal. Attachment-focused EMDR can be especially beneficial for healing wounds that are affecting your adult relationships. 

EMDR Therapy in Your Area

EMDR is an excellent modality for those whose adult lives are affected by trauma. Whether it be relationship problems, flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares, anxiety, or other symptoms of carrying trauma in your body, EMDR and AF-EMDR can help. Contact an EMDR therapist in your area today to take back control of your life.