Tell me more...

EMDR cannot only help you in classic cases of PTSD, eventhough that is what it was originally developed for.

Francine Shapiro developed her method with severely traumatised Vietnam veterans and she managed to cure patients with a history of drug abuse and violence due to their PTSD symptoms.

As so often, this did not lead to the method being adopted gleefully by all and sundry, but to huge scepticism: how could this seemingly simple intervention work where the most prominent psychiatrists and psychologists had utterly failed?

Not everyone was happy to try something new.

Not everyone was ready to concede that their efforts had been futile.

And worst of all: this method was so fast!

Years and years of psychotherapy couldn't possibly be rendered obsolete?

From a business perspective it did not seem worth embracing.

BUT

I and many others disagree. There is enough human suffering that can be healed with EMDR to last all the therapists in the world for a lifetime - even if you only ever saw each client one single time (which is in fact sometimes sufficient).

EMDR can help with

 all kinds of anxieties, fears, difficult feelings such as shame, guilt, anger, panik, phobias, compulsions, nightmares, eating disorders and sometimes even tinnitus and headaches. It can help with problems in the past, present and future.

Being upset is never helpful, and yet often difficult to overcome.

AND

if you compare it to physical injuries: yes, if your leg is severed at the hip you need an operation, but if you have a splinter in your finger you may also need a doctor to open the wound, remove the splinter, cut away infection, apply disinfectant, close the would and then - once it is healed, it will never bother you again.

 

So how can that be true? One method to help with so many different issues?

 

It can help because all of these are symptoms with the same basic cause. It becomes totally obvious when you understand how memories are processed in your brain.

 

Under regular conditions your brain can observe and process everything as it happens. When you sleep everything is processed once again and then stored for later reference.

HOWEVER,

under stress your brain cannot always work properly. The oldest parts of your brain may take command and throw you into fight or flight or freeze mode and you have no power to properly observe and process what is going on. Such events may be processed properly afterwards - and often they are.

BUT sometimes they are not.

In this case memories are tossed chaotically into your subconsious where they can cause  a lot of stress.

All of us have a number of such troublemakers in our system and the thing is: they pile up. It takes a lot of energy to keep them from influencing our lives and we are not always successful in keeping these troubling stressors at bay. They push their way into our daily operations in the form of all the problems mentioned above.

Each time something vaguely reminds your brain of a traumatizing event the original feelings will re-emerge - often without any reference to anything in the past.

All you know is: "I can't speak in front of an audience" or

"I can't manage tunnels" or

"my back hurts when my mother in law is in our house."

And along with such experiences come beliefs about ourselves such as "I am in danger" or "I am not good enough".

 

So what is EMDR ?

EMDR is a technique that allows the brain to re-process old events and feelings. By focussing the brain on the memory and also on the movement of eyes or hands or another kind of sensation which moves between both sides of the body, two things are achieved:

concentration is divided and and both halves of the brain are incited to work together intensively. By dividing concentration and maintaining a certain distance the effect is more like being a spectator than an actor in the events that your subconscious opens up to your view.

This is important to help prevent re-traumatisation and also to gain a better understanding of what actually happened.

Although every session is totally unique and we can never know what your subconsious will present, there are some traits of an EMDR session, which always occur:

At the beginning you may or may not need some time to come up with a troubling emotion.

After a while it will present itself and you will feel the pain that it originally involved.

You will not avoid this pain but will look it in the eye and understand exactly what it was about.

​

NOTE:

Pain that is squarely faced and acknowledged lasts for no more than 90 seconds

until it starts to change.

After a little while the picture changes and your system informs you how to solve this for yourself. Should you get stuck I will be there to help you.

 

NOTE:

Your system loves you and wants you to be happy. It is fundamentally wise and capable and will tell you (if you listen well) what you basically already know about yourself:

you are a good person, you are good enough, there is nothing to be afraid of, you deserve a wonderful life.

 

NOTE:

In a session I will be with you to make sure that you can handle what emerges, that the process is safe, controlled and manageable and that you finish the session in good spirits and free of the old problem, with a new constructive idea in its place.