Living with lingering effects of trauma such as anxiety, flashbacks, fear, or emotional overwhelm, can feel exhausting and have negative impacts on our lives. Often we try many different ways to shake these feelings and to get unstuck, but for reasons that may feel unknown to us, these feelings and memories can stick with us. EMDR is therapy grounded in extensive research that allows your nervous system to reintegrate painful memories in adaptive ways so that these memories are less overwhelming to your life today.
EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) uses guided eye movements or bilateral stimulation (tapping) to help reprocess stuck memories. In sessions, you focus on the memory while following simple cues, allowing your brain to integrate the memory naturally, often requiring less retelling of the story that other forms of talk therapies.
Evidence shows that EMDR therapy often results in a reduction of the vividness of emotion associated with the traumatic memories. EMDR does not cause the individual to forget the painful memory, but it allows a person to re-organize the memory in your brain so that the memory is no longer triggering reactions, feelings or unpleasant physical sensations with the same level of intensity. Clients report that a difficult situation, memory, place, person that would have previously triggered large and unwanted reactions no longer have the same hold on their lives.
If you are in distress or worried about someone else, call or text the Canadian National Suicide Crisis Helpline at 988. If you believe your life or someone else’s life is in danger, call 911 immediately.
