How EMDR Can Benefit People Struggling with Trauma

Trauma can create problems that interfere with all aspects of your life. It can perpetuate feelings of anxiety, stress, sadness, and even suicide. While there are numerous therapies and treatments to help with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related disorders, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR therapy, might be the most beneficial for those struggling to overcome their trauma. 

EMDR therapy is an all-encompassing form of treatment that works to provide critical pieces from other therapies to resolve trauma-related issues. It is an eight-phase treatment approach composed of standardized protocols and procedures. The eight phases and three-pronged protocol facilitate a comprehensive evaluation of the clinical picture, client preparation, and processing of:

  • Past events
  • Current disturbing situations
  • Future challenges

Throughout its history, EMDR has only become a more refined and renowned therapy for its positive impact on change, growth, and healing among patients. If you have not yet pursued EMDR as a therapy to help cope with trauma, exploring how EMDR works can help you understand why it might be the key to overcoming your trauma.

Reorganize Thoughts

EMDR helps to reorganize thoughts, feelings, and memories related to a traumatic event. It does not accomplish this by getting you to become used to the traumatic memory so that it no longer triggers an unpleasant response. Instead, EMDR helps to reorganize your brain’s storage to combat the connections between the emotions and feelings provoked by your trauma. Simply put, this takes the memory from your life and condenses it to being one chapter of your life instead of the whole story. It works to reduce the pain felt from the memory so that it no longer defines or controls your everyday experiences.

Ability to Let Go

EMDR focuses on releasing the emotions attached to your trauma to achieve letting go. Trauma can create a pattern of circular thinking, which always seems to bring you back to the traumatic event. Circular thinking also perpetuates anxiety, stress, sadness, and thoughts of suicide. It does this by focusing on your neural networks. These neural pathways sometimes become blocked by your trauma. Healing these pathways focuses on resource development to strengthen these networks; this includes experiencing positive sensations, emotions, and cognition. Examples might consist of asking you to focus on loved ones or things and activities that help you feel comfortable and protected. Repetition of these thoughts helps to repair these pathways and helps you begin to let go of the feelings attached to your trauma. This process enables you to increase tolerance for the processing of traumatic memories.

What is Desensitization?

During EMDR, you will learn to incorporate a dual awareness state to maintain awareness of the present moment experiences while simultaneously recalling memories of the traumatic event. Dual attention stimulation, or DAS, is used in bilateral eye movements, pulses, and tones that alternate from left to right. Such therapy effectively helps reduce vividness, somatic arousal, and emotional intensity associated with distressing memories.

The different movements and sensations help interrupt your focus on your trauma’s disturbances, enhancing the processing of information within your cerebellum and thalamus and drawing your responses to new stimuli, which allows you to observe your current environment. Not only does this treatment help get all parts of the brain communication, but it will also enable you the opportunity to assess your trauma and your current environment to determine that there is no present threat around you. Integrating yourself in such a way helps to shift your perspective, which can also help turn your emotional perspective attached to your trauma.

Positive Self-Belief

Traumatic experiences greatly influence your internal dialogue, leading to negative feelings about yourself and others. It can also lead to negative behaviors, including self-medicating with harmful substances such as drugs and alcohol. Through repeated treatment sessions, EMDR helps to foster a new internal belief system that, when applied, will broaden the spectrum of experiences in your life. It accomplishes this by helping to bring resolution to the traumatic memory. 

EMDR also helps you gain a new perspective on yourself and others. Such a positive change can begin to improve the quality of your life, including how you behave, make choices, and maintain relationships. Attaining this perspective helps you become confident in knowing who you are, your place in this world, and how you can now lead your life with confidence.

 

EMDR is much more than just treating the root of your trauma. It is about reframing the entire workings of your brain to help you attain a positive outlook on yourself and the world around you. At DiscoveryMD, we use EMDR as a therapy to help those struggling with PTSD and other trauma-related disorders. EMDR is just one of the many therapies we offer as we offer both conventional and alternative therapies for trauma, substance use disorders, and other mental health-related issues. We are here for you, so don’t wait any longer; get help today by contacting us.

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