Top Reasons to try EMDR
By Kate Double, MSW, LCSW
You are in pain… sometimes that pain becomes agony, and you have been suffering for a long time without relief. Your pain stems from things that happened to you in your past. You know this, but you just can’t make it go away. You need to figure this out because your joy, self-concept, relationships, and future depend on it; but you’ve tried a lot of different things, and you are losing confidence in your own ability to heal.
A “Class A” Treatment for Trauma
EMDR is completely different than traditional therapy, and admittedly it looks and sounds strange. What is it about following your fingers or a light bar from side to side that helps? It looks like some weird form of hypnosis, but it’s almost the opposite of that. Rather than putting you in a trance, EMDR activates your emotions so that they can be accessed, reprocessed, and desensitized. I will admit that I started out a skeptic, but seeing is believing. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Department of Defense both consider it a Class A treatment for trauma. Who am I to question the WHO?
While initially I couldn’t help but think that neuroscientists must go absolutely wild at the explanation of memory networks, I came to the realization that it just doesn’t matter so long as it works. So far from all I read and all I see with patients, IT WORKS!
We understand the pain that trauma generates. The pain that has influenced every facet of your life has been devastating, but we can help. What is there to lose? Some patients have reported that EMDR has helped them more in a few months than other methods helped them over years.
It’s Not Just for Trauma!
Initial research for EMDR focused on combat veterans and sexual assault survivors, but EMDR isn’t just used for major, life threatening trauma. It can be used for events that we experience as traumatic that don’t fall into traditional trauma categories, as well as anxiety and phobias, and many other areas where we get “stuck” in treatment.
You can move forward with your life. You can capture joy again.