EXPLANATION ON HOW EMDR WORKS AND THE PROCESS OF EMDR:

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing which is a mouthful so we just say EMDR therapy. It's an approach that was created as a trauma focused approach and we define trauma as any life experience that we might have had that was overwhelming, confusing, or just too much for us to process at that time. When an event like that happens that’s overwhelming, it's highly charged emotionally. Our brain doesn't work through it in the same way it does just regular life events, so it gets stuck in our brain in a certain way and then it's attached to images that may be upsetting, emotions that are disturbing, negative self beliefs, or body sensations like heart starts racing. Then, something in our day to day life comes up and taps back into those responses in the same way and they come up again.

A metaphor I like to use:  If you’re going grocery shopping and you came home that that memory would just get filtered into its filing cabinet in your mind and you probably wouldn't think about it again unless someone said hey what did you do last Saturday? You might recall that memory if you went grocery shopping and something traumatic happened like there was a shooting or tornado or something like that then that would then become a traumatic memory and it would be stored with distressing images, negative belief, emotion, or body sensation so that then the next time you need to go grocery shopping, your body would respond with those same things: anxiety, heart racing… You might believe “I'm not safe or something bad could happen to me” even though it would be fine to go. The foundation of EMDR is the idea that our brain stores different memories in different ways. What we're doing with this therapy is we're going in and identifying what are those past experiences that were traumatic or did not get processed naturally the way they should have and we go back and we want to re-process them because the way they got processed is they got stuck associated with those uncomfortable things. W.e want to go and work back through those so that then they're associated with adaptive thoughts. So, the next time you think about going to the grocery store, instead of thinking “I’m not safe”, maybe you don't even think about the traumatic event last time, or you think about it but now you think “that was then, and I'm safe now, I'm OK, I can handle this, It’s gonna be all right” and you have more of a neutral response.

EMDR can take the negative charge away from the past experiences. We can't erase them. We can't change the outcome or the way things played out, but we can change the way they're stored in our minds. We do that by identifying what those past experiences are, what are the negative beliefs, emotions, body sensations  are associated with it.  Then we do what we call targeting them so an actual in session experience that we would be using is something called bilateral stimulation which can be done in several different forms. You can do it with buzzers in your hand that kind of buzz left and right in each hand, you can do eye movements back-and-forth, audio tones left, and right in your, ears. All of that is basically stimulating the right hemisphere of your brain and then the left hemisphere, back-and-forth. Research supports that bilateral stimulation promotes the reprocessing of experiences and memories in an efficient and effective way.

It’s not like hypnosis at all.  You would just be deep in your thoughts but fully aware of what you were doing in the room. For some people it might play out like a movie but their thoughts start reprocessing through that experience and then their emotions and their bodies process it too. EMDR is known to be much more efficient than traditional therapy. While we want to get into that old material, we also also want you to be well resourced, well equipped ,well prepared in the now to deal with it as it comes up either today or tomorrow or later.  Helping give you tools and strategies to manage it now and balancing going back and doing old work with giving you strategies for the here and now.

The first step is just doing some history taking, which includes telling me about what life's been like for you, what have been some of your challenges, what have been some of your celebrations, your strengths, your supports, your resources.  We then develop some of those even more so that you will not only have external resources for support but internal ones as well.  These will help you manage any distress or anxiety that comes up during the reprocessing of the difficult memories and events. We also want to create what we call a resource we call a “container” for when you aren’t in the right time or space to deal with the distress of the maladaptive response. Being able to put those things in a container in between sessions helps you temporarily set them aside until we are in the right place and time to deal with them and reprocess them.

Having external and internal strategies to manage the maladaptive responses helps you with the reprocessing, which we do almost like you’re riding in a safe and secure train and you’re watching the events from the safety of that place and watching it with enough emotional distance that you’re not re-living it.  It’s a dual awareness.  You’re halfway in the present and halfway in the past but always aware of yourself and your surroundings and always in safe place to reprocess the memory so that it gets stored differently in an adaptive way.

EXPLANATION OF BRAINSPOTTING:

Because you have trauma that you want to address, whether it be things that happened in your childhood or adulthood, things that have led to beliefs about yourself or the world, brainspotting is a way to change that.  Not momentary change but permanent, lasting change in your brain, your body and your mind.

Talk therapy is great for psychoeducation and to work through things from my logical brain to your logical brain.  Prefrontal cortex to prefrontal cortex.  And that serves a great purpose.  However, with trauma that we have experienced, we don’t only store that in our prefrontal cortex.  We store that in the body and in the more primitive part of our brain, sometimes called the reptilian brain or the monkey brain, better known as the part connected to your limbic system.

Continuing to work in the logical brain doesn’t touch that deep wounding that happened during a traumatic experience because during that event, your logical brain went “offline.”  So none of the trauma was registered there.  All that trauma registered in your limbic brain and your brain stem (reptilian brain).

In order to release and heal from long held patterns of behavior, long held beliefs, long held thoughts, negative cognitions about yourself and behavioral patterns that no longer serve you, we have to tap into that limbic system where all of that is stored.

This is called Bottom-Up processing, where we go from your brain stem up to your prefrontal cortex, not Top-Down which starts in that cognitive logical brain.  Logical brain work is good for learning communication skills and self-care and parenting skills and healthy coping mechanisms.  But it cannot heal deep wounds stored in your limbic system.

Doing brainspotting allows us to tap into your limbic system and heal those deeply stored wounds and negative cognitions on a different level that actually helps you resolve that trauma not just try to think your way out of it.

Emergency Responder Exhaustion Syndrome (ERES), also known as First Responder Exhaustion Syndrome (FRES) is a state of profound physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion that develops in emergency personnel from continuous exposure to traumatic and high stress environments, leading to symptoms like burnout, depression, anxiety, insomnia, substance abuse, isolation, and impaired job performance. It's characterized by feelings of depletion, a diminished ability to show empathy, lack of motivation, and depression.

$140/session. In person or Telehealth.

$180/ Couples. In person preferred.