Free from Limitations... Live Fully in the Present
What a person experiences as traumatic and how that impacts their life varies greatly from person to person. Did the experience negatively impact your life? Is there a negative belief that haunts you becasue of the experience? Does it impact how you function in other areas of your life? Do you experience symptoms like distressing memories, thoughts or feelings, flashbacks, sleep disturbances, hypervigilance, blame, or aggressive, reckless or self-destructive behavior? EMDR can help you adaptively process traumatic experiences so that they no longer haunt you.
You will be free to live your life without the burden of the past.
Your past is just a story.
And once you realize this, it has no power over you.
~Chuck Palahniuk
TRAUMA and PTSD
Emotional Abuse
Car Accidents
Witnessing Violence
Harassment
Childhood Abuse
Rape
Terror Attacks
Hate Crimes
Violent Crime
Birth
Loss of a Loved One
Combat
Physical Abuse
Medical Conditions/Procedures
Sexual Abuse
Bullying
Natural Disasters
Intimate Partner Violence
Discrimination
Immigration
EMDR is an incredibly effective and powerful tool to use to process experiences from the past that were significant or traumatic to us so they no longer impact how we respond in the present.
Using EMDR to process past experiences allows them to be integrated into the nervous system so they lose their "emotional charge" and the negative belief that was originally associated with the experience (i.e. I am not safe, I am going to die, I am unlovable, I am not good enough, etc.) is replaced with a positive belief because you can now view the experience from an objective standpoint (you can see the situation from the perspective of someone standing on the outside looking in).
The relief that people experience from using EMDR to process experiences from the past is profound and the speed with which they begin experiencing relief has empirically been shown to exceed most other forms of therapy.
The Past
Sometimes things that have happened to us in the past have a way of haunting us and we don't really understand why we can't stop thinking about them or why when we least expect it we feel triggered and the intensity of the experience comes flooding back leaving us feeling on edge and like all our energy is being consumed by this past experience. We may find that it impacts our focus, mood, concentration, ability to sleep, makes us jumpy, gives us nightmares or racing thoughts or leaves us feeling like we have to proceed with caution and always check over our shoulder. This can feel really overwhelming, exhausting and daunting to conquer.
Significantly impactful or traumatic experiences from the past, when left unprocessed, will continue to impact how we engage with the world in the present. When they originally occur, these traumatic experiences are left unprocessed and remain "frozen" in our nervous system. When we think about the experience it has a strong emotional charge and often elicits a physical response or sensation in our body. When a situation in the present arises our nervous system is triggered and reacts in the same way that it did to the original experience regardless of whether that is the most appropriate/effective response for the present situation. Often times we are left wondering why we had such a strong reaction to the situation in the present when it didn't seem warranted.
The Past & Trauma