Trauma Recovery

I have a special interest in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy (EMDR), a therapy focused on assisting clients in their recovery from traumatic or stressful events that continue to impact their well being - these may be recent events or historical events.

What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. 

EMDR is an evidence-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This means that it has been studied by many researchers and found to be effective in treating PTSD.

In this model, a presenting symptoms or issue is thought to have an underlying memory connected to it. It is thought that symptoms keep occurring because the memory is “frozen” or “unprocessed” in the brain.

EMDR therapy can be used for any symptom related to memories or experiences of the past.

“Shame dies when stories are told in safe spaces”

— Ann Voskamp

What sort of issues is EMDR used for?

  • PTSD

  • Single Incident Traumatic Events

  • Birth Trauma

  • Complex Trauma

  • Historical Trauma

“Trauma is not what happens to you, it’s what happens inside of you as a result of what happened to you.”

— Gabor Mate

How does EMDR actually work?

After trauma, people with PTSD often have trouble making sense of what happened to them. EMDR helps people process the trauma, which allows them to start to heal.

One theory (the Adaptive Information Processing model) suggests that our working memory has a limited capacity. Simultaneously retrieving a traumatic memory and following eye movements requires more working memory capacity than is available. Consequently the traumatic memory is not completely retrieved.

The goal of EMDR is that people gain distancing and desensitisation from the memory and that it becomes less vivid, with fewer associated feelings of fear, anger and sadness.

The processed memory is then stored in the long-term memory, and overwrites the old memory so it remains less distressing.

FAQs

  • In EMDR, you will pay attention to a back-and-forth movement (bilateral stimulation), while calling to mind the upsetting memory until shifts occur in the way that memory is experienced and more information from the past is processed.

    You are not required to talk about extensive details of the trauma, rather you are able to simply focus on the worst part of the memory.

  • The duration of treatment depends on the nature of the trauma (whether this was a single episode trauma or whether a person has experienced complex trauma).

    Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference.

  • EMDR may be more beneficial for those who want to focus on processing their trauma without necessarily making sense of what happened to them.

    EMDR minimises the extent to which people in therapy have to relive and re-experience their trauma.

  • The EMDR Association of Australia has some informative information and YouTube clips.

    Learn more about EMDR here.

EMDR Mechanisms of Action