Psychotherapy for relationship issues involving couples, families, individuals, children and teens who may also experience personal issues with depression, anxiety, and trauma.

Creating Healthy Connections with Carol H. Corcoran

ABOUT EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR is a powerful fast-acting therapy technique that can be used to relieve the effects of painful emotional experiences or other traumatic events including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. It has also been found to be effective for treating symptoms associated with phobias, stress and depression. Many people who do not experience results from others methods, such as talk therapy or medications, do find safe, rapid and effective results from EMDR. This technique is not hypnotherapy and is non-invasive. It may be used in conjunction with any of the previously mentioned methods, or as a stand-alone treatment.

How does it work? When a person is very upset, their brain cannot process information as it does ordinarily. One moment becomes "frozen in time," and remembering a trauma may feel as bad as going through it the first time because the images, sounds, smells, and feelings haven't changed. Such memories have a lasting negative effect that interferes with the way a person sees the world and the way they relate to others. Much like REM sleep (rapid eye movement), in which it is believed that we process information from the days events by moving our eyes back and forth rapidly, EMDR works to move the stuck or traumatic information from the right hemisphere of the brain to the point of processing it between the two hemispheres, until it no longer holds a "negative charge."

EMDR appears to have a direct effect on the way the brain processes information. Normal information processing is resumed, so following a successful EMDR session a person no longer relives the images, sounds, and feelings when the event is brought to mind. You still remember what happened, but it is less upsetting. Many types of therapy have similar goals. As indicated previously, EMDR appears to be similar to what occurs naturally during dreaming or REM sleep. Therefore, EMDR can be thought of as a physiologically based therapy that helps a person see disturbing material in a new and less distressing way.