What is EMDR Therapy and How is it Different from Other Therapies: From an EMDR Therapist Bay Area
Introduction
Ahhh yes EMDR therapy, maybe you have heard it’s like magic! Maybe you have no idea what it is and somehow you still landed on this page. Either way, it’s great that you’re here! As an EMDR therapist Bay Area, I'm here to teach you more about what EMDR Therapy is, what it is not and how it can help you differently from other therapies you’ve tried.
EMDR therapy at it’s core is aimed at helping resolve and reduce emotional reactivity of past difficult experiences. The goal is not for you to forget about what happened to you, though wouldn’t that be nice?! Instead, the goal is to help you look at past events and say something like “that was hard but it doesn’t define who I am now, I can be happy now”.
What is EMDR and what it is not…from an EMDR therapist Bay Area
Let’s talk about it!
EMDR is not only for people with obvious trauma.
I have people come into my office all the time saying, I don’t have trauma, I don’t need EMDR. And absolutely, I hear them, not everyone has trauma! I’m not out here labeling everyone with trauma, that’s not right! And yet what I find often is that peoples experiences are just more subtle than we think trauma to be. As I work with clients on the root of their anxiety or difficulties now in relationships, we start to uncover hard past experiences or themes they're struggling with. EMDR can help resolve these past experiences-whether considered trauma or not- once and for all so they no longer affect you now
EMDR therapy is an evidenced based and science based therapy but it is can also be flexible and individualized for best outcomes.
Though often shown through research to work faster than traditional methods of therapy and sometimes feels like magic (really, trust me), EMDR is not always a quick fix solution. We are complex beings as humans. Therefore, the experiences that make up how we respond in the present are often complex as well. This means, it can take time to work through healing these past experiences that set the foundation for present day struggles. BUT it is possible to deeply heal those wounds, no matter how small they may seem.
EMDR therapy aims at reducing the emotional reactivity or ‘charge’ of past experiences rather than helping someone forget about the memory.
By lessening the emotional charge of an experience, people can start to link other adaptive, more positive experiences with this hard experience. Ultimately, this can help people change their perspective on the hard thing. And as a result, can help change emotions associated with the memory that lead to more helpful ways of healing and facing the world now in the present. And you can finally feel happy!
How is it different than other therapies and how can it help you…from an EMDR therapist Bay Area
At the core, many therapies are focused on cognitive changes, ie changes in thoughts based on values that lead to changes in feelings and therefore changes in behaviors. EMDR therapy aims at healing the whole person on a deeper level by integrating the cognitive experience with the emotional and physical experience in the body.
EMDR therapy is not talk therapy. But EMDR can be intertwined with use of talk therapy because it is still flexible.
EMDR therapy is a different approach to achieve deeper healing. There is talking in the first few phases of EMDR treatment to gather information, explore roots of issues you may be struggling with, etc. and later to reevaluate goals targeted in EMDR. During actual reprocessing (aka healing parts or eye movements), both the therapist and the client are mostly quiet. The therapist will ask the client to share what they are noticing (thoughts, emotions, body sensations) in between eye movement sets without having to give over detailed recount of memory. AKA no trauma dumping required! What a relief! -is what I hear from most clients when they learn this.
EMDR therapy goes beyond healing the cognitive mind which most other therapies stay focused on. (reframing, affirmations, thought stopping and thought challenging, sound familiar?!)
EMDR therapy helps people who have tried other forms of therapies in the past. As a result they ‘know’ logically how they should now think about a situation. But still have a hard time emotionally believing and feeling what they ‘should’ think. That lingering emotional and physical stuff is where the resolve and deeper healing with EMDR therapy happens. For this reason, EMDR can feel like magic. An experience that has been ‘stuck’ for so long, can dissipate much faster than someone even imagined possible. Other therapies absolutely have their place in mental health treatment. When issues in the present appear to be rooted in past experiences, EMDR therapy can be helpful. No prior therapy experience is needed to be successful in EMDR.
*An experienced and trained EMDR therapist should always provide this kind of therapy, check out how I can help you as an EMDR therapist Bay Area
EMDR therapy can be helpful for treatment resistant depression and anxiety.
Sometimes when people have been through extensive therapy, they still struggle. This could be because deeper changes have not been tapped into emotionally and somatically in their body. EMDR does just this. Often times, anxiety and depression is the symptom that you see on the surface. Anxiety and depression can be shaped by difficult past experiences. These past experiences rewire people’s brains. In doing so, it changes their perception of themselves and their abilities in the present. EMDR therapy focuses on rewiring your brain. This can allow you to access helpful and positive experiences you’ve had. Instead of staying focused on the bad experiences that your emotions and body cling to for survival.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, EMDR therapy is a different approach to achieve deeper healing. EMDR therapy is by no means a magic fix for everything. BUT it can significantly reduce emotional distress and reactivity to experiences that you may not even realize shape your reality now. Our brains learn and integrate experiences from the past that shape how we view the world and people now in the present. Our brains have a resilient way of healing from hard things. But every so often, little things fall through the cracks and get stuck. Those past experiences play on repeat and unfortunately can shape how you respond in the present. EMDR therapy should be provided only by experienced and trained EMDR therapist, which I am. Learn more about working with me, an EMDR therapist Bay Area.
I have an incredible passion for working with people through the use of EMDR. This is because I have witnessed shifts in experiences that years of cognitive therapy has struggled to change. We are complex beings so we need therapy approaches that integrate our complexities. EMDR does just that.
If you’re ready to get past the hard s*** from your past so it doesn’t control you anymore, please reach out to me, your EMDR therapist Bay Area. I can’t wait to schedule a free 20 min consult with you. There we can see how EMDR could help you heal and show up with more confidence!
-Nicole Egan, LMFT