Could You Benefit from EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s quite a mouthful to say and remember, but I won’t quiz you on what it stands for.  

EMDR is a therapy that helps us heal trauma. Trauma is subjective; it’s all about what we process as trauma, not about the event itself. So what one person may process as trauma may not be processed as trauma for another.  

Our bodies and brains want to heal. A good analogy for this would be if we have a cut.  Normally, our bodies want to heal injuries like this. Trauma is like if we received a cut, but during the process of receiving the cut, something got stuck deep in the cut as well. We’d see the cut get red and maybe infected. Whatever was inside the cut would prevent our bodies from being able to heal the wound fully. EMDR is like if we take that object out of the cut and allow our bodies to complete the healing process.

Sometimes we don’t realize that we’ve experienced trauma. If we go back to the example of a cut, sometimes the object in the cut is so far in there that we don’t see it. And, to be fair, we can’t see our own brains. So we don’t know what our brains have processed as trauma or not.  Additionally, sometimes we don’t want to face our past or what cut us to begin with.  

But there are some indicators that can tell us that we might get some benefit from EMDR, similar to an irritated cut signaling that we need to give it extra attention. Even if you can’t see what’s irritating it, you can still see the irritation.

So if you’ve been struggling with any of the following then it it could be worth talking to an EMDR-trained therapist about how you could benefit from this therapy:

• feelings of anxiety, panic, phobias
• chronic illness or medical issues
• feelings of depression
• lower self-esteem
• eating disorders
• grief and loss
• pain
• performance anxiety
• stress related issues
• sexual assault
• addiction
• sleep disturbance
• violence and abuse
• feelings of powerlessness
• feeling stuck