You deserve to define your own path towards healing.

We are committed to providing holistic, comprehensive, individualized, trauma-informed approaches to healing and well-being. One approach that we use in therapy is called Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, or EMDR. This page will share a general overview of EMDR and how it might support you on your healing journey.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy

EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing is an empowering therapeutic approach that supports your healing by using the brain’s natural healing abilities to help your body and mind to reprocess and metabolize experiences of trauma and distress, and improve your health and well-being.

Healing at the level of body, mind, and spirit. 

Image: Brea Youngblood

EMDR was created by Francine Shapiro, and is an evidence-based psychotherapy modality that aims to support individuals to heal from suffering such as trauma, PTSD, complex trauma, anxiety, panic attacks, grief, physical injury, chronic pain, and more.

Extensive research has found that EMDR therapy helps people heal quicker and with long-lasting results.

What is EMDR?

EMDR supports the brain and nervous system to return to its natural healing capacity.

EMDR works to remove barriers to accessing your own mind and body’s innate process for healing.

EMDR helps to create a container of safety, which then allows the brain and nervous system to reprocess trauma in a way that feels safe and manageable.

This helps you to resolve trauma, cultivate resilience, build confidence, and return to your innate aliveness.

Meet Our EMDR Therapists

“The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.”

- Francine Shapiro

Challenging and overwhelming experiences happen to all of us.

Trauma is anything that overwhelms your capacity to cope and respond - and leaves you feeling helpless, hopeless, and out of control.

Trauma can result from something that happens too soon, too fast, or too much - OR too little for too long.

What is trauma?

When something traumatic happens it leaves an imprint on the mind and body - almost as if a part of you becomes frozen in time. It is as if this part of you continues to live now - as if it is still then.

Due to the overwhelm of the experience and your natural fight/flight/freeze protective response, your mind and body are not able to process the distress, and your brain is not able to make sense of the experience. Traumatic experiences are stored differently in the brain.

The elements of the memory - the sensations, emotions, beliefs, images, become fragmented, and your brain is not able to process the experience properly as a long-term memory (store it in the hippocampus) so it remains “stuck” in short-term memory (stored in the amygdala - the emotional and alarm center of the brain). 

This blocks your mindbody’s innate ability to heal.

Your brain and body therefore might remain stuck in challenging patterns of sensations, thoughts, emotions associated with that unprocessed memory. 

These unintegrated, unprocessed memories, can then be easily activated when something happens in the present day that in any way resembles that unresolved memory - leaving you re-experiencing intense emotions, sensations, and/or beliefs whenever the memory comes up.

It can feel like you are re-living the original experience every time it is remembered. 

Trauma is not the event or what happened to you, trauma is what happens within your nervous system in response to what happened to you. 

How does EMDR work?

The science - during REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement Sleep) - which is the phase of sleep when dreams occur and your brain processes the information from your day and moves it into long-term memory storage, your eyes naturally move back and forth beneath your eye lids. This eye movement is called Bilateral stimulation.

EMDR works to replicate this Bilateral stimulation process to support your brain in returning to it’s innate ability to process information.  

In session - Bilateral stimulation can be replicated through eye movements, a gentle sound that alternates from ear to ear, or pads that gently vibrate alternating from hand to hand.

During a session you are invited to focus on the Bilateral stimulation while also bringing attention to an unresolved, distressing memory.

Through the replication of Bilateral stimulation as you focus on unresolved memories, you support your brain in reprocessing (revisiting and relearning) and reintegrating the fragmented parts (sensations, beliefs, emotions, image) of the traumatic experience.

What does an EMDR session look like?

EMDR is a more experiential process, and it involves less talking about the details of the traumatic experience. 

An essential part of EMDR is building awareness of what is happening inside, awareness of your inner experience.

In session you will be invited to call to mind the distressing event or issue - and to focus on what was seen, heard, felt, thought, etc. You move at the speed of what feels safe to you.

Throughout the process of EMDR you build your ability and capacity to comfortably notice sensations, images, emotions and beliefs that are attached to the distressing memory. 

The therapist then facilitates the Bilateral stimulation while you focus on the distressing material. Through this process of dual awareness you are invited to hold half of your attention on the Bilateral stimulation as a way to safely ground yourself in the present moment, while the other part of your awareness is invited to turn inwards to just notice whatever comes to mind.

Dual awareness also supports you to remain in the “witnesser” or “observer” role to your inner experience, which helps to prevent you from becoming overwhelmed by the details of the unprocessed memory or shift into “reliving” the memory.

With EMDR we start working with the distressing memories/experiences that are associated with challenges and difficulties that you are dealing with currently. 

As you are able to revisit these memories in a way that feels safe and manageable, while also tending to the sensations, emotions, and beliefs, your mind is able to make sense of the experience. 

The fear and other overwhelming emotions, as well as the physiological stress response associated with the memory, are able to metabolize and move through.

The goal at the end of EMDR is that when remember the experience you no longer will feel as if you are reliving it - the sensations, overwhelming emotions and negative beliefs no longer hold power over you. It becomes just another memory.

EMDR Can Be Helpful For

  • PTSD 

  • Complex PTSD

  • Shock trauma

  • Developmental trauma 

  • Abuse

  • Somatic issues 

  • Chronic pain

  • Vicarious trauma 

  • Complicated grief 

  • Eating disorders 

  • Anxiety and panic disorders 

  • Phobias

  • Depression and bipolar

  • Performance anxiety 

  • Chronic stress

  • Emotional neglect

  • Increased relaxation

  • No longer getting triggered when reminded of the traumatic event

  • Improved sleep

  • Ability to set boundaries

  • Improved quality of relationships

  • Improved self-esteem and more self-compassionate

  • Improved focus and clarity

  • Improved physical health

  • Improvement in mood

  • Better able to be in relationship with your emotions opposed to being taken over by them

  • Able to be present in the moment

  • Improved creativity

Benefits of EMDR

More Information on EMDR

How EMDR Psychotherapy works in your brain

EMDR and C-PTSD Treatment with Dr. Arielle Schwartz

Animation to explain EMDR Therapy and Trauma to Adults.