Do you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed out when faced with certain situations? Do memories of past traumas still haunt you and cause you to feel fear and pain? If so, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy could be the right approach for you.
EMDR is a type of psychotherapy that helps people who have experienced psychological trauma to heal and make positive changes in their lives. It does this by helping them to reprocess their traumatic memories and reduce their emotional distress. Through EMDR, people can learn how to feel less triggered and build a stronger sense of resilience when faced with difficult situations. In this article, we will look at three ways EMDR helps you to feel less triggered.
How EMDR helps you reprocess traumatic memories
The first way EMDR helps you to feel less triggered is by helping you reprocess traumatic memories. When you have experienced a psychological trauma, you may have developed trauma-related symptoms as a result. These may include feelings of anxiety, panic, depression, nightmares, flashbacks, and feelings of uncontrollable fear. You may even feel triggered by things that you know don’t warrant such big feelings.
There are also behavioral changes that can come with trauma, including a decrease in your sex drive, increased alcohol and drug use, withdrawal from your friends and family, and an inability to experience pleasure from everyday activities.
Traumatic memories are often processed in fragments, which can be very distressing. EMDR therapy helps you to re-process these fragments so they can be stored as complete memories and your feelings about them can be released. This can help you to feel less triggered when you are faced with reminders of your traumatic event, especially if you have not yet processed it.
How EMDR helps you build resilience
Another way EMDR helps you to feel less triggered is by helping you to build resilience. Traumatic events can leave a person feeling stressed and overwhelmed. This can lead people to believe they have mental health conditions like anxiety and depression because a trauma response can overlap with anxiety and depression symptoms.
EMDR can help you to process your traumatic memories and relieve the associated stress, making you feel less triggered. This can help you to reduce your feelings of anxiety and depression, which can lead to a stronger sense of resilience.
The three ways EMDR helps you feel less triggered
– Processing Traumatic Memories: As we have already explored, when you process traumatic memories, you are able to put them into words, which is a crucial step in the healing process. EMDR therapy helps you to process your traumatic memories so they can be stored as complete memories and your feelings about them can be released. This can help you to feel less triggered when you are faced with reminders of your traumatic event, especially if you have not yet processed it.
– Building Resilience: As we have also explored, when you process traumatic memories, you are able to reduce the associated stress, which can help you to feel less triggered. This can lead to a stronger sense of resilience, which can help you to cope with difficult situations and reduce the risk of developing mental health conditions.
– Overcoming emotional triggers: Finally, it is important to note that EMDR is not just used to process traumatic memories. It can also be used on emotional triggers, which are emotional memories that do not have to be related to a particular event. For example, you may feel triggered by a particular person or situation. These emotional triggers can be very distressing and make it difficult to function in your daily life. EMDR is also used to help you to overcome these emotional triggers.
EMDR Therapy In-Person or Virtually
EMDR therapy can be provided in person at our office using pulsers and headphones that create bilateral stimulation (BLS). This means that BLS creates a rhythmic pattern across your midline (both sids of your spine) to bring your brain fully online in order to reprocess traumatic memories or distressing thoughts.
EMDR therapy can be provided virtually as well. When our therapists work with people virtually, the client is provided techniques to tap on both sides of their body, which creates the same effect as the pulsers used in the office.
Benefits of EMDR
There are many benefits to choosing EMDR therapy. For example, it can be effective for treating a wide range of psychological conditions and can be used with individuals of all ages and any cultural background. The great thing about EMDR is that it does not require you to talk about your traumatic event, which may be too painful, or you may not have the words to describe what occurred. It is also a short-term therapy, and most people will see positive results within eight to 6 to 16 sessions.
Finally, it is a cost-effective form of therapy because you quickly get to the root of what is holding you back and move through it to have healthier feelings and beliefs about yourself.
There are no official statistics on how many people have used EMDR therapy, so it is difficult to know how many people have benefited from it. However, there are many success stories that can encourage others to explore this therapy and an abundance of research showing its effectiveness.
Finding an EMDR therapist
If you think EMDR therapy could be right for you, reach out to us and we can provide a free consultation to see if this therapeutic approach is right for you. Therapists who are trained in EMDR are able to support traumatic memories, as well as distressing memories. You may be able to use your health insurance benefits to pay for therapy. If the therapist you want to work with is out of network, your insurance may still reimburse you for all or a portion of the therapy costs.
Conclusion
EMDR therapy is a short-term psychotherapy that can help you to process traumatic memories and build a stronger sense of resilience. It can also help you to feel less triggered when you are faced with reminders of your traumatic event, especially if you have not yet processed it. There are a number of benefits to choosing EMDR therapy, including that it is effective for treating a wide range of conditions, can be used with all ages and cultural backgrounds, and has no side effects. Finally, it is a cost-effective form of therapy that can be completed within 6 to 16 sessions.
