Trust your body’s wisdom. Let your brain guide you.
EMDR
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a new psychotherapy used to treat troubling problems such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, phobias, complicated grief, sexual abuse, panic attacks, performance anxiety, addictions, and guilt and anger that are the result of traumatic experiences. It can also be used to enhance emotional resources such as confidence and self-esteem.
EMDR can help heal traumas, whether big “T” or little “t“ traumas. There are many safety procedures built into the EMDR process, but it can be a very intense emotional experience, temporarily. It is not appropriate for those who are unwilling or unable to tolerate highly disturbing emotions for a short period of time.
How does EMDR work?
Your brain has a natural mechanism for processing disturbing events. However, when a traumatic experience is overwhelming, the brain may not be able to process it in the usual way. That’s why traumatized people often find themselves stuck in disturbing memories long after the traumatic event. Research shows that alternating stimulation of right and left hemispheres of the brain helps to jump-start the brain’s natural healing ability. This allows the traumatic memory to become less and less disturbing.
In an EMDR session, the therapist guides the client in concentrating on the disturbing memory or emotion while providing bilateral stimulation - via moving the eyes rapidly back and forth, tapping on the client’s knees, client tapping their own knees or shoulders, or using handheld buzzers.
EMDR sessions are different for everyone, because the healing process is guided from within. Sometimes past issues or memories come up, or unpleasant emotions or body sensations which are related to the current issue. These generally pass within a few minutes and the upsetting emotion or memory often seems to fade in to the past and lose its power.
Click here to watch a brief video on EMDR.
Brainspotting
Brainspotting is a brain-body, mindfulness-based, relational therapy that evolved out of EMDR. Brainspotting works in the deep brain and helps process material that’s stored deep in our unconscious.
A brainspot is a spot in your visual field that’s like a physiological time capsule that holds emotional, distressing, and traumatic experiences in memory form. When you access that time capsule by focusing your eyes on the spot, the experience stored there begins to release, allowing your brain to process and heal it.
Research shows that trauma and emotional and physical memories are stored in the body. The nervous system gets frozen in time, stuck in a fight/flight or freeze response. Brainspotting unsticks your nervous system so the experience can be integrated. That experience becomes something that happened to you but no longer defines you.
What happens in a Brainspotting session?
First, your therapist will help you find the eye position or spot in your visual field that’s most associated with either activation around an issue or resourcing (grounding, neutral, or calm feelings). Once you find the spot together, the therapist will hold a pointer at that spot so you can focus on it. Music that moves left and right through headphones (called biolateral music) is optional, but can be soothing for some people.
By gently focusing on the spot with openness and curiosity, anything associated with that spot (including thoughts, images, emotions, body sensations, memories) is brought into consciousness for your brain to process and heal.
Your therapist is right there supporting you the whole time.
Click here to watch a brief video on Brainspotting.