What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of therapy that is very helpful in improving how we relate to past unpleasant experiences by changing how our explicit and implicit memories of those experiences are coded in our body and nervous system.

In plain English this means that EMDR can help you to deeply heal from past unpleasant or traumatic events. This is the type of deep repair that can release the hold that the past has had on you in your every day life.

EMDR utilizes bilateral stimulation (BLS), which is visual, auditory or tactile stimulation that alternates from stimulating one side of the brain (through the body) and then the other.

The use BLS, when processing through unpleasant memories, feelings or sensations, has a way of bringing your body and mind’s natural healing capacities online. Your EMDR therapist will guide you through using BLS while visualizing things from the past, which will allow your inner healing ability to truly process and heal these old psychological wounds.

EMDR treatment can be an incremental process, though this process will be fully complete when you can remember an unpleasant past experience, without feeling all of “Yuck” that was once associated with it.

Due to its ability to change our present-day experience of unpleasant aspects of our past, EMDR can help us to heal from old wounds, big or small. EMDR has been validated as a treatment for “Big T” traumas, but it can also be very helpful in resolving “smaller t” traumas, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), and any past experience that brings up negative thoughts or feelings when you think about it.