Congratulations to one of our counsellors who is now a fully qualified EMDR Practitioner!
What is EMDR therapy?
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an interactive psychotherapy technique. It is often used for people who have experienced trauma. During EMDR therapy sessions, a therapist directs your eye movements whilst you focus on a specific event.
How does EMDR therapy work?
When traumatic events happen, the body’s natural coping mechanisms can be overwhelmed. EMDR therapy helps to process traumatic memories and find more effective ways to manage them.
This is done through an eight-phase approach to address the past, present, and future aspects of a stored memory. Sessions involve recalling the distressing event while receiving ‘bilateral sensory input’. This could be side to side eye movements, hand tapping or musical tones.
What is EMDR therapy?
A wealth of research has been conducted demonstrating the benefits in treating psychological trauma such as violent conflict, natural disaster, physical assault, road traffic and workplace accidents and childhood sexual and/or physical abuse or neglect. EMDR has been found to be of benefit to children as well as adults.
Psychological distress is often overwhelming, and, in some cases, the brain is unable to process what has happened.
The distressing memory seems to become frozen on a neurological level and recalling the event can seem like re-living the experience. The person may remember exactly what they saw, heard, smelt, tasted or felt. Such ‘flashbacks’ can be very distressing and disruptive to normal life. A person may block off their memories of the event or even ‘zone out’ to avoid frightening or uncomfortable feelings.
EMDR therapy depends on alternating left-right stimulation of the brain, through side-to-side eye movement. This can help the brain to process frozen or blocked information. Besides eye movements, auditory or tactile techniques such as hand tapping can be beneficial.
As a result, the traumatic memories can lose their intensity and in time become less distressing.
Interested in EMDR therapy?
Just get in touch and one of the team will be happy to help.
Email hello@breathe-uk.com or call 02920 440191