For clients who have experienced traumatic events, EMDR is a therapy that might be beneficial.
How it works
Our bodies and minds are built to heal naturally. When we get a cut, we don't have to do anything special, our body just naturally heals it, and after hard experiences our minds tends to find healing, resilience, and growth. However, when we experience something that completely overwhelms our ability to cope and process everything that happened, we've experienced trauma. All the feelings, body sensations, and thoughts we would have experienced in that moment remain stuck because our system was too overloaded to process them in the moment, much like a piece of shrapnel that is keeping our body from healing the way it naturally would. Most of these unprocessed experiences are stored in our bodies as sensations and feelings, and arise when we are triggered or think about the event, overwhelming us again and blocking our ability to heal. Often there are negative beliefs about ourselves tied to unprocessed information, that naturally become more positive with reprocessing. Trauma is not the past event, but rather the things that stay present with us even though the event is over. Those feelings, thoughts, sensations, and beliefs simply need to be 'digested' a bite at a time and with support, in order to be released. EMDR is the act of processing these pieces while also doing side to side eye movements which keeps us focused on the present moment, and also mimics the eye movements we do in our sleep when we naturally consolidate information. Sometimes therapists use other side to side movements like vibrating 'tappers', a light bar, or butterfly tapping. Once information is processed, your brain will be able to heal the way that it is built to. After some reprocessing you might notice more insights or more accurate thoughts about the event, less distress in your body, and the memory will become less vivid and painful. During this process, your therapist will use tools to support you and you can ask them to stop at any time.
[Extracted from "Keep Healing" EMDR Information Worksheets, Hailey Boggess]