I have written about EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) quite a bit on this blog. It is one of several counseling techniques I use at my practice in Monterey, but is probably my favorite one. The technique was first developed to help people suffering the aftereffects of trauma, but it is also very effective with people who suffer from anxiety for a variety of reasons. See this story for a vivid example where EMDR made a big impact in one of my young clients.

One question I often get is, how exactly does this work? What explains why this technique would be able to make such an impact in such a relatively short amount of time?

It helps to first look at how the mind reacts when experiencing a traumatic event.

We all experience traumatic events at one point or another in life. Some of these would be considered major Trauma, like experiences in war, serious accidents, domestic abuse, and other. We call these the ‘Big T’ traumatic events. ‘Little t’ traumatic events seem relatively minor in comparison. For instance, an incident at school where we felt a bit humiliated; being disciplined unreasonably by a parent; or choking on a piece of food.

Regardless of whether the event was major or minor in terms of intensity, we react to them in similar ways. Our brain interprets the event as a threat to our well-being and immediately tries to protect us in an emotional and physical way. Then, once the event has passed, it tries to make sense of it. It tries to find a rational explanation for what just happened. If that succeeds, the traumatic events become unpleasant memories, but they do not create excessive discomfort or trigger emotional upheaval when revisiting them.

We call this normal brain activity processing. It is processing the information, categorizing the elements into chunks that make sense. Yes, the shouting match that just happened between my mother and I was traumatic and it scared me. But, I understand that she is stressed out at the moment and I did provoke her when I played my music too loud, again. Now we have context, understanding, some way to explain.

But what happens when the brain fails to process the event properly? What if what we just experienced is simply too scary or threatening to think about? In these cases the brain tends to wall off the memory, stuff it away in a corner and leave it there, preferably never to visit it ever again. It’s a little like when an infection in the body gets walled off to prevent it from spreading to the rest of the body. This abscess may be painful, but at least it’s local and doesn’t affect the rest of the body.

Even though this approach may be a practical and effective protection mechanism, it isn’t a good long term solution. It doesn’t fix the problem. The memory stays in the mind and occasionally gets revisited, triggered by a smell, a sight, a word, a piece of music. And when it is, the emotions  tend to come roaring back with it, in full intensity as if it happened just yesterday. Unfortunately, this also tends to reinforce the brain’s determination never to visit that place again. It’s simply too painful. It still doesn’t make sense. And so we keep going, for years and years repeating the same cycle again again.

Francine Shapiro, the developer of EMDR, observed in 1987 that the act of moving her eyes while walking in the park appeared to decrease the negative emotions associated with her own distressing memories. She assumed that eye movements had a desensitizing effect on the memories. Later experiments confirmed this to be the case and showed that the therapeutic effects were most pronounced when combining the eye movements with other treatment elements, including certain cognitive components.

In other words, moving the eyes from side to side seems to be body’s way to help process painful memories. It is hypothesized that the eye movements that are seen during the REM phase of sleep (REM = Rapid Eye Movement) serve the same purpose – the brain is processing the memories of the previous day.

Researchers and clinicians continued to perfect the technique in the years that followed and found that any bilateral sensory stimulation would create a similar effect to moving the eyes. Most clinicians now use tapping or small handheld vibrators to deliver sensory stimuli alternately to the left and to the right side.

A specially trained psychotherapist credentialed in the use of EMDR will first try to identify the root of the current problem, the memory behind the current anxiety.

Second, the associated wrong beliefs are uncovered and exposed. (I am not beautiful, I’m all alone. Nobody likes me. I’m not safe.)

At this point in the therapy, the clinician will introduce the bilateral stimulation while guiding the client through subtle questioning to reevaluate those beliefs. (Are you in fact alone? Are you really unsafe?) This helps detach the original trauma from the protective actions and thought patterns that followed.

The bilateral stimulation at this point is critical. Through it the brain is coaxed into processing mode to try to deal with the very cause of the current problem.

At some point, the original traumatic event is explored in the same manner, often with the help of other cognitive techniques to help make sense of what happened.

Regardless of whether you suffered a ‘Big T’ or ‘small t’ event, help is available. EMDR is often a very effective technique to help you deal with the after effects of the trauma. You do not need to continue in your present suffering!

Contact me for a free counseling consultation today. My counseling practice is situated in Monterey and my contact number is 831-444-1747.

PS: I accept payment from several insurances and payers: Aspire, Coastal, MBIPA, MHN, HMC Healthworks, Victims of Crime. Check on your insurance card under Mental Health benefits to verify what coverage you have.

Many clients pay cash for their sessions (my fee is $125 per session or lower negotiated rate in special circumstances) and then submit the superbill provided by me to their insurance for possible reimbursement. See here under the FAQ section for some more information.

One of my favorite techniques to use with clients is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short. This technique is best known for its impact on the aftereffects of trauma, but it is also very effective with children and adults who suffer from anxiety (see here for more information).

Anxiety can wreak havoc in our lives. We can’t think straight, we become very narrow-focused, we cannot problem solve well and we end up feeling alone and isolated. What’s worse, the more we try to avoid anxiety, the more it seems to take over.

Anxiety is a general term for a variety of disorders that cause nervousness, fear, apprehension and worry. Anxiety affects how we feel and behave. Anxiety also cause physical symptoms like headaches, muscle tension or pain. When it is severe it can even cause sweating, chest pain, shortness of breath, a sensation of choking and more.

It is helpful in therapy to identify the root of this fear. Where does it come from? Where did it start? This root is often linked to a specific incident in the past. Sometimes this event is a very vivid memory or it may have been forgotten. In some cases, the event occurred in childhood and is not clearly remembered, but the anxiety still gets triggered by seemingly unconnected situations or events.

The anxious brain is easily overwhelmed and triggered resulting in symptoms of excessive worry, panic, obsessive compulsive behaviors and intrusive thoughts or phobias. The root of these symptoms is often connected to seemingly unrelated issues, which are actually at the heart of the problem.

Part of the problem with anxiety is that the brain has isolated the traumatic event from our day-to-day awareness in an attempt to shield us from the negative emotions. It’s a little like the body’s reaction when it forms an abscess – it encapsulates the infection to prevent it from spreading through the rest of the body.

The use of EMDR helps to activate memories, sensations, emotions, images and thoughts and thereby unmask the original incident or fear. It helps the brain to connect the event (the root) to the current fears, emotions and thoughts. This allows the brain to organize the old information and reprocess it into a more acceptable package resulting in diminished anxiety or fear. This process is not unlike the REM stage of sleep where the brain processes information from the day and sorts it out, discarding the non-important information. The eyes move rapidly back and forth during REM sleep, which also occurs during EMDR.

EMDR has produced positive results in many of my clients. Everyone responds to the process differently, but it often takes relatively few sessions to experience dramatic resolution of trauma or anxiety memories.

Contact me for a free counseling consultation today. My counseling practice is situated in Monterey and my contact number is 831-444-1747.

PS: I accept payment from several insurances and payers: Aspire, Coastal, MBIPA, MHN, HMC Healthworks, Victims of Crime. Check on your insurance card under Mental Health benefits to verify what coverage you have.

Many clients pay cash for their sessions (my fee is $125 per session or lower negotiated rate in special circumstances) and then submit the superbill provided by me to their insurance for possible reimbursement. See here under the FAQ section for some more information.

Trauma can really mess with your mind. People who live through both big and small traumas often experience significant difficulty in life. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an effective evidence-based technique used in counseling to help the brain process the trauma and allow the victim to move on (see here for more information).

I recently saw a client whom I’ll name Juan (name altered to maintain confidentiality), an 11-year old boy who was referred to me after witnessing a violent crime. The sessions were so successful that I felt it would be worth telling the story here.

Juan had a happy family dynamic – his parents had a good marriage, he had a little sister that he was very close to and he had two older half sisters that often visited and whom he got on with. He enjoyed school and had friends that he liked and felt close to. The family lived in a ‘rough’ part of town where violence is not uncommon, but he had not been distressed by any of it until this time.

One afternoon Juan was playing in his front yard by himself. He looked up when he heard a sudden commotion across the street. Three men were leaving a convenience store, yelling and swearing as they left the store. Two of the men got into a white truck and as they pulled away, one of the men leaned out of the window and shot the third man who collapsed on the street.

The men were arrested and Juan was interviewed as a witness. It quickly became clear during this time that Juan’s mental state was suffering. His mother stated that the experience of the shooting had left him terrified and nervous to leave her side. His grades in school had deteriorated and he had lost pleasure in his normal activities like going to the park to play ball or ride his bicycle. He no longer wanted to sleep in his own bed at night and was terrified to be by himself in the home without his parents.

Juan was easy to communicate with and was open about his feeling of fear and panic after the shooting incident. He seemed desperate for help.

We started EMDR on session 3 (since it can bring up strong emotions, protocol is to not start the intervention to soon in the counseling process).  Juan recalled the shooting scene: he clearly remembered the men, the convenience store, the white truck and the shooting. His worst memories (his ‘triggers’) were “the man falling over” and the “white truck with the man”. He was very worried and sensed it in his stomach and in his head. He was worried that he was going to die and ranked his distress at a level of 8 out of 10.

During desensitization (part of the EMDR process to remove the emotion from the memory) he came to a rapid realization that the ‘man in the truck’ had been caught and would spend 25 years in jail. He initially feared that the man in the truck would escape and come looking for him to kill him, but later realized that it wouldn’t much of a problem since the man would be old and Juan would be grown up with children of his own. He stated that he, “wouldn’t be scared anymore.”

There was a dramatic change in Juan’s level of anxiety by the fourth session. He briefly panicked when he was asked to testify in court but one preparatory session helped him deal with this challenge. Juan was able to testify with no problem and proudly told me later that he had had “no fear”. He had used tapping (EMDR technique) during his time in the private room in court and even explained to the court investigator who was present that he was calming himself like his “psychiatrist” had told him.

He came in for 3 more sessions. We played and drew pictures and he stated emphatically, “I’m not scared!” His mother was pleased that he had resumed going to the park by himself and wasn’t afraid to be at home alone anymore. His school grades were also improving.

EMDR proved to be a very effective intervention to use with Juan. He responded rapidly and experienced significant relief of his symptoms. EMDR is a very promising technique to use in traumatized children.

Contact me for a free counseling consultation today. My counseling practice is situated in Monterey and my contact number is 831-444-1747.

PS: I accept payment from several insurances and payers: Aspire, Coastal, MBIPA, MHN, HMC Healthworks, Victims of Crime. Check on your insurance card under Mental Health benefits to verify what coverage you have.

Many clients pay cash for their sessions (my fee is $125 per session or lower negotiated rate in special circumstances) and then submit the superbill provided by me to their insurance for possible reimbursement. See here under the FAQ section for some more information.

Post-traumatic stress is real and is very difficult to deal with emotionally. One of the key symptoms of PTSD is a feeling of being disconnected from society or of feeling “unplugged”. Among the many symptoms that PTSD victims suffer from, this is a big one. The good news: counseling can help.

Human beings are hard-wired for connection. We thrive when we feel connected, when we feel that we belong to a family, when we can share our experiences with others, both good and bad. Our tribe and our place in it are extremely important! Being a part of something bigger than us or having a sense of being connected to even just one other human being gives us a sense of purpose and significance.

Connecting includes being able to make friends and being able to get along with others, particularly our loved ones; being able to have a genuine relationship with another person; being able to trust. Trauma makes this very hard to do. People with PTSD may feel desperate for connection but may not know how to get “unfrozen” or how to plug back in.

PTSD affects people from all walks of life. We often think of soldiers returning from the atrocities of war and survivors of terrible accidents, but there are also those who suffered through domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, rape and many other traumatic situations. PTSD can be triggered by any life situation that has caused significant trauma reactions such as fear, rage, and mental collapse.

Sufferers of PTSD find it hard to be social, spontaneous, to have fun or play. They may feel locked in a state of hyper-arousal with symptoms of panic, hyper vigilance, flashbacks, rapid breathing, etc. Sometimes the opposite is true where clients complain of fuzzy thinking, feeling vacant, feeling nothing, with numbed emotions and unable to feel vitally connected or present in the moment.

People who are traumatized find it hard to sense what’s happening in their bodies. They often can’t find the words to describe what’s going on with them. Worst of all, they are not aware or can’t put into words what’s upsetting them.

How can counseling help you?

• It will help you feel safe and teach you how to trust
• It will help you expand your level of tolerance to emotions such as fear, anger and helplessness
• It will give you space to express the guilt, shame, anger, rage and hostility you feel in a caring and loving environment

I love helping sufferers of trauma. I utilize a technique called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy) that has been shown very effective to alleviate the consequences of trauma. See this page and this counseling blog post for more on this technique.

Contact me for a free counseling consultation today. My counseling practice is situated in Monterey and my contact number is 831-444-1747.

PS: I accept payment from several insurances and payers: Aspire, Coastal, MBIPA, MHN, HMC Healthworks, Victims of Crime. Check on your insurance card under Mental Health benefits to verify what coverage you have.

Many clients pay cash for their sessions (my fee is $125 per session or lower negotiated rate in special circumstances) and then submit the superbill provided by me to their insurance for possible reimbursement. See here under the FAQ section for some more information.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a proven counseling technique to address the negative emotional effects of suffering trauma. But what is trauma? Most people usually first think of obvious traumatic events, like losing your house in a fire, or witnessing a crime, or a soldier witnessing atrocities during war. These and others are obviously devastating events are indeed defined as trauma. We refer to them as large T-Traumas. However, there are many life events that are not that catastrophic and yet can have an equally negative impact – these are the small t-traumas and they are much more common than one might think. Maybe you have had an argument with a friend or a loved one and no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to get over it. Or maybe you experienced some seemingly trivial incident, but you keep ruminating on it again and again. As hard as you try to ignore it, this thing remains locked in your psyche. When this happens you are not able to enjoy life or relationships like you did before.

Regardless of whether the trauma is big-T or small-t, you react to them. Sometimes you process the experience without any negative consequences but other times your nervous system absorbs the trauma and seems to lock it away. Once it is stored like this, it will affect the way you react and respond to everyday life situations.

How does one cope? Some experience a deadening or numbing of emotions to help them cope. Others may ‘space out’ at times and no longer be fully present as it seems to help to get them through their day. These are negative coping strategies and can cause you to feel even more isolated and detached from the world around you.

EMDR is a psychotherapy that has been proven to be able to undo some of these dysfunctional strategies.

• EMDR integrates the fragmented memories associated with trauma believed to be stored in the right hemisphere of the brain by using bilateral stimulation.
• Bilateral stimulation helps the brain move the traumatic fragmented memory from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere where meaning is made of it and where it can then be filed away.
• The memory becomes dull and no longer vividly unsettling or re-traumatizing every time you think about it.

Somatic therapy is a holistic therapy that studies the relationship between the mind and body in regard to past traumatic experiences. The underlying thought is that these events cause an involuntary physical response to the traumatic memory. In a way, the body has stored away the disturbing memory. Somatic therapy combined with EMDR is powerful counseling approach. This includes noticing and responding with curiosity to what is happening inside the body. Somatic psychotherapy combined with EMDR helps the therapist and the client track how the nervous system has reacted to the trauma and how these reactions have influenced subsequent behavior.

Are you suffering from traumatic memories like mentioned above? Contact me for a free counseling consultation today. My counseling practice is situated in Monterey and my contact number is 831-444-1747.

PS: I accept payment from several insurances and payers: Aspire, Coastal, MBIPA, MHN, HMC Healthworks, Victims of Crime. Check on your insurance card under Mental Health benefits to verify what coverage you have.

Many clients pay cash for their sessions (my fee is $125 per session or lower negotiated rate in special circumstances) and then submit the superbill provided by me to their insurance for possible reimbursement. See here under the FAQ section for some more information.