EMDR: Working with Difficult Life Experiences

I use a treatment approach called EMDR Therapy

EMDR is an approach to psychotherapy that works with memory. It focuses on 1) the biological storage of memories throughout our brains and 2) how those memories shape our experiences.

This treatment addresses difficult life experiences as they contribute to our problems in daily living. The founder of EMDR, Francine Shapiro, noted the following:

Any event that has a lasting negative effect on the self or psyche is by its nature traumatic. EMDR has been used effectively with problems in daily life as well as traumatic events.

Memories can be adjusted through connecting them to healthier memory systems. Our ability to change appears to be enabled after transforming troublesome memories.

Distinct from cognitive behavioral therapy, experiential, and psychodynamic approaches to psychotherapy, EMDR is an integrative and comprehensive approach to treatment:

  • It encompasses 8 phases.

  • It focuses on our past, present, and future.

  • One aspect of EMDR therapy is bilateral stimulation, accomplished through eye movements, tactile taps, or auditory tones.

  • It also works compatibly with the major psychotherapy modalities.

This comprehensive approach to psychotherapy works, in part, through focusing thoughtfully on our increasing Awareness and on our

  • Feelings

  • Beliefs

  • Images

  • Interpersonal life

  • Resilience

  • Physical responses

  • Emotional strengths

EMDR has been used effectively across conditions and cultures. It is responsive culturally and can adapt to our varying beliefs and resources.

All of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences…will have to come to terms with the fact of the self-changing brain. Norman Doidge

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