EMDR Psychotherapy

EMDR Psychotherapy is a comprehensive psychotherapy that engages the body’s natural healing system to integrate past experiences, allowing our pasts to inform rather than define our present and future. It is a collaborative and goal-oriented process that is grounded in the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist. 

 

EMDR is based on the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, which understands present struggles as the result of our past experiences and how those are stored in our nervous systems with maladaptive information. This model also embraces each individual as their own agent of change and their natural capacity for internal healing. While some people may be aware of specific past experiences that are affecting them in the present, many people are often not consciously aware of how their past experiences inform their present responses to themselves, others, and the world. EMDR therapists help clients make past-present connections to better understand the development of their current ways of responding to problems in life, themselves, and others, as well as help prepare clients for memory reprocessing. EMDR therapists serve as guides and witnesses on your healing journey.

 

As a treatment focused on internal healing, EMDR helps people safely explore, experience, and make sense of their emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, and impulses in response to past, present, and anticipated experiences. EMDR is an evidence-based treatment for simple and complex PTSD, developmental and/or attachment trauma, depression, anxiety, complicated grief, personality disorders, and more. EMDR is effective for those struggling in their relationships with themselves and/or others and a wide range of diagnostic and symptomatic presentations, including low self-esteem, perfectionism, fear of failure, pervasive hopelessness and helplessness, OCD, social anxiety, phobias, dissociation and emotional disconnectedness, avoidance (fear of flying, driving, or public speaking, for example), difficulty with emotional and physical intimacy, life and/or work stress and transitions, anger and emotional reactivity, somatic symptoms, adjustment to chronic pain and illness, and more. Relational EMDRSM has a particular focus on healing attachment wounds, which ultimately leads to a secure attachment style.  

 

Please visit the EMDR International Associations’s website to learn more about the body’s natural healing system and how EMDR allows your neurological system to heal from past experiences that are affecting your present problems. Please visit The Center for Excellence in EMDR Therapy's website for more information about Relational EMDRSM.