Healing from Trauma with EMDR

Whether you have experienced a specific traumatic event, or know that your past holds powerful sadness and loneliness over you— we can use EMDR to help you heal from what you’ve faced. When traumatic things happen in our life, our brain holds the information and locks on, even when the event is over, and even if the information doesn’t stay true. EMDR helps break through deeply held, maladaptive beliefs established by those traumatic events, and then brings in adaptive, healing truths.

I approach all of therapy with a trauma-informed lens, meaning most of us have experienced more trauma and loss than we realize and that it still impacts us. We can notice this when we respond to something with emotions, thoughts and sensations in our body that don’t seem to match up with what just happened before us. This is often a sign that your body remembers something from before and that negative experience is still effecting you today.

EMDR is a highly respected way to process and heal from trauma that allows us to work through the experience without having to fully “go there” again.

“Often when something traumatic happens, it seems to get locked in the brain with the original picture, sounds, thoughts, feelings and son on. Since the experience is locked there, it continues to be triggered whenever a reminder comes up. It can be the basis for a lot of discomfort and sometimes a lot of negative emotions such as fear and helplessness, that we can’t seem to control. These are really the emotions connected with the old experience that are being triggered.” (Shapiro, 2018)

When processing trauma it is important to engage your body in the healing work. I ask my clients to practice some form of slower physical exercise (yoga, slow-walking) to get in their body and “notice” it.

It is imperative that you have a self-care practice when going to therapy for trauma, so we will develop a general plan that you can follow outside of session to take care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.

Healing from trauma or a significant loss takes time, and I ask that you give yourself the time necessary. The event will always be a part of your life, but its intensity and power can decrease and its impact over your life doesn’t have to define you.

Sexual Trauma & Shame

Sexual Trauma has a way of haunting us like nothing else can. And the devastating thing is that carrying shame is the double wound: first, that we were harmed to begin with, and second, that we carry a sense of defectiveness—right to the present—that something must be terribly wrong with us.

Our work together can bring healing from the trauma itself, but just as important for moving forward, help you step into the reality that there is nothing defective about you. Understanding this reality will empower you to let go of the misplaced shame.

Sexual shame can take many forms: sexual abuse as a child, being sexually assaulted as a teenager or college student; porn use or online forums where you went farther than you would’ve ever imagined.

If you’re burdened with a sexual history and tired of carrying the shame, I’m here to help.