What is EMDR Therapy?
What happens when you are traumatised?
Most of the time your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when something out of the ordinary occurs and you are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car accident) or by being repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g. childhood neglect), your natural coping mechanism can become overloaded. This overloading can result in disturbing experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being "unprocessed". Such unprocessed memories and feelings are stored in the limbic system of your brain in a "raw" and emotional form, rather than in a verbal “story” mode. This limbic system maintains traumatic memories in an isolated memory network that is associated with emotions and physical sensations, and which are disconnected from the brain’s cortex where we use language to store memories. The limbic system’s traumatic memories can be continually triggered when you experience events similar to the difficult experiences you have been through. Often the memory itself is long forgotten, but the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually triggered in the present. Your ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can therefore become inhibited. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way.
Before EMDR therapy your body kinda thinks that it is living in the past, recreating the intense emotions that are connected to that event. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way and after EMDR therapy the emotional distress will be gone, allowing you to live in the present moment instead.
Before EMDR therapy your body kinda thinks that it is living in the past, recreating the intense emotions that are connected to that event. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way and after EMDR therapy the emotional distress will be gone, allowing you to live in the present moment instead.
What is an EMDR session like?
EMDR utilises the natural healing ability of your body. After a thorough assessment, you will be asked specific questions about a particular disturbing memory. Eye movements, similar to those experienced during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist's finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field. Sometimes headphones and tapping will be used at the same time. The eye movements will last for a short while and then stop. You will then be asked to report back on the experiences you have had during each of these sets of eye movements. Experiences during a session may include changes in thoughts, images and feelings. With repeated sets of eye movements, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses its painful intensity and simply becomes a neutral memory of an event in the past. Other associated memories may also heal at the same time. This linking of related memories can lead to a dramatic and rapid improvement in many aspects of your life.
How long does treatment take?
EMDR can be brief focused treatment or part of a longer psychotherapy programme. EMDR sessions can be for 50 to 90 minutes.
What can EMDR be used for? In addition to its use for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, EMDR has been successfully used to treat: • anxiety and panic attacks • depression • stress • phobias • sleep problems • complicated grief • addictions • pain relief, phantom limb pain • self-esteem and performance anxiety Can anyone benefit from EMDR? EMDR can accelerate therapy by resolving the impact of your past traumas and allowing you to live more fully in the present. It is not, however, appropriate for everyone. The process is rapid, and any disturbing experiences, if they occur at all, last for a comparatively short period of time. Nevertheless, you need to be aware of, and willing to experience, the strong feelings and disturbing thoughts, which sometimes occur during sessions. We will spend a significant amount of time ensuring you will have the skills needed to endure these emotions prior to processing any disturbing memories.
Will I remain in control and empowered? During EMDR treatment, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. This is not a form of hypnosis and you can stop the process at any time. Throughout the session, the therapist will support and facilitate your own self-healing and intervene as little as possible. Reprocessing is usually experienced as something that happens spontaneously, and new connections and insights are felt to arise quite naturally from within. As a result, most people experience EMDR as being a natural and very empowering therapy.
What evidence is there that EMDR is a successful treatment? EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment which has successfully helped over a million individuals. The validity and reliability of EMDR has been established by rigorous research. There are now nineteen controlled studies into EMDR making it the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma.
What can EMDR be used for? In addition to its use for the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, EMDR has been successfully used to treat: • anxiety and panic attacks • depression • stress • phobias • sleep problems • complicated grief • addictions • pain relief, phantom limb pain • self-esteem and performance anxiety Can anyone benefit from EMDR? EMDR can accelerate therapy by resolving the impact of your past traumas and allowing you to live more fully in the present. It is not, however, appropriate for everyone. The process is rapid, and any disturbing experiences, if they occur at all, last for a comparatively short period of time. Nevertheless, you need to be aware of, and willing to experience, the strong feelings and disturbing thoughts, which sometimes occur during sessions. We will spend a significant amount of time ensuring you will have the skills needed to endure these emotions prior to processing any disturbing memories.
Will I remain in control and empowered? During EMDR treatment, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. This is not a form of hypnosis and you can stop the process at any time. Throughout the session, the therapist will support and facilitate your own self-healing and intervene as little as possible. Reprocessing is usually experienced as something that happens spontaneously, and new connections and insights are felt to arise quite naturally from within. As a result, most people experience EMDR as being a natural and very empowering therapy.
What evidence is there that EMDR is a successful treatment? EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment which has successfully helped over a million individuals. The validity and reliability of EMDR has been established by rigorous research. There are now nineteen controlled studies into EMDR making it the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma.
What is parts work?
Linda offers EMDR therapy in combination with parts work.
Parts Work Therapies focus on developing a map of the functioning of your mind. Linda has learned that the best way to approach these, is with a neurobiological orientation, meaning that she is curious about your survival responses, and how these have been shaped by the adversity in your life. Anyone who has ongoingly activated survival responses is predisposed to trauma, and will have parts of their nervous system focussed on managing the trauma responses.
Linda does parts work drawing on therapeutic wisdom from several sources including: the literature on dissociation, the Model of Structural Dissociation and Polyvagal Theory. Linda has undertaken specific structural dissociation training with highly experienced and specialists in this field, like Dr. Catherine Hynes and Dr. Roger Solomon, to learn to do parts work and integrate them in her practice with EMDR Therapy. Linda is not trained in Internal Family Systems, but she uses their model to explain what parts work is about. Please see the video below to learn more. What is RI-EMDR? Linda was also recently trained in RI-EMDR (Relational Integrative EMDR), which is a beautiful form of EMDR therapy that particularly focuses on repairing attachment wounds that happened during childhood. RI-EMDR incorporates principles from attachment informed EMDR, Resource Therapy (advanced parts work), somatic/polyvagal, imagery rescripting, Neuroscience & mindfulness. The institute that provides this training is Seva Training (https://www.sevatraining.com.au/).
Linda does parts work drawing on therapeutic wisdom from several sources including: the literature on dissociation, the Model of Structural Dissociation and Polyvagal Theory. Linda has undertaken specific structural dissociation training with highly experienced and specialists in this field, like Dr. Catherine Hynes and Dr. Roger Solomon, to learn to do parts work and integrate them in her practice with EMDR Therapy. Linda is not trained in Internal Family Systems, but she uses their model to explain what parts work is about. Please see the video below to learn more. What is RI-EMDR? Linda was also recently trained in RI-EMDR (Relational Integrative EMDR), which is a beautiful form of EMDR therapy that particularly focuses on repairing attachment wounds that happened during childhood. RI-EMDR incorporates principles from attachment informed EMDR, Resource Therapy (advanced parts work), somatic/polyvagal, imagery rescripting, Neuroscience & mindfulness. The institute that provides this training is Seva Training (https://www.sevatraining.com.au/).
