Trauma Recovery Using Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

I LOVE this therapy and so do our clients who receive this therapy. Here’s why:  For clients, what is felt inside as a trauma settles down and begins to fade away as you begin to really live again. I can give you a couple of examples from our hundreds of clients who have experienced recovery:

A man – to maintain his privacy, let’s call him Gabriel - in his 50’s was told by his doctor that he had pre-cancerous cells in one of his lungs. As normal as it was to have heightened anxiety, Gabriel, went into debilitating panic attacks and couldn’t go to work. After days of not being able to go to work or function properly, he came to Rock of Peace Counselling and began the EMDR preparation and treatment. We were able to associate feelings connected to a childhood trauma where he was alone and afraid in a hospital room having just come out of minor surgery. In his experience back then, parents didn’t stay with their children, and children like him often felt abandoned. 

Within four therapy sessions, he was able to settle and separate the subconscious emotions and memories from the past that were haunting his present. Within another session or two, we were able to solidify that positive experience, and months later when checking in on how he was doing, the therapy proved to be long-lasting. He was able to maintain the peace he experienced through therapy, although his medical concerns were continuing.

Another example I can give you is a woman, who thought she was long ago healed from her childhood sexual abuse, had been recently experiencing negative feelings in her normally healthy sexual relationship with her husband. With short-term EMDR therapy, she was able to reprocess the negative experiences she had in childhood, overcome the negative beliefs she had about herself, and move forward in her relationship feeling equally empowered.

These are two examples of how EMDR can help with trauma. 

EMDR can also help people cope with and/or heal from:

• PTSD and C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
• Personality disorders
• Panic attacks
• Complicated grief
• Dissociative disorders
• Disturbing memories
• Phobias
• Pain disorders
• Eating disorders
• Performance anxiety
• Stress
• Addictions
• Sexual and/or physical abuse
• Body dysmorphic disorders

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful method of psychotherapy. To date, EMDR has helped an estimated two million people of all ages relieve many types of emotional and psychological distress.