As long as you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong.

Trauma can be any experience that our system isn't able to process. We sometimes refer to big-T traumas and little-t traumas. Big-T traumas are experiences that most people would expect could lead to PTSD - physical or sexual assaults, combat experiences, natural disasters, severe motor vehicle accidents, etc. These experiences can be so big and intense that our system gets stuck, we aren't able to process it, and many people will experience lasting trauma-related symptoms, such as intrusive memories and nightmares, depressed mood, flashbacks, high levels of arousal, and feelings of self-blame.

Little-t traumas are more ubiquitous. They can be experiences like having a parent who yells a lot, or getting bullied in school, or going through swimming lessons that felt scary and overwhelming. They are experiences that activate the fight or flight response. Some people will have these experiences and get past them, feel fine, and move on with little issue. But for others, these experiences will be traumatic.

What makes an experience traumatic is not about what happened. It is about how your brain and body respond to it and process it. Our brains and bodies are incredibly adaptable, and they are able to process and neutralize the vast majority of our experiences so that a month or a year later, if we were to think about that experience, we could feel calm and relaxed in our bodies. But if an experience is traumatic, that processing response is interrupted, and we get stuck. If an experience is traumatic, when we think of it later, our bodies will react as if the experience is happening again, with the same emotions, bodily sensations, and negative thoughts about ourselves as we had when the experience originally occurred. This is true for both big-T and little-t traumas.

Often with clients, part of my work is helping to reprocess those traumatic experiences. Working to neutralize those memories in the brain and the body now, so that they don’t affect my clients anymore as they go forward in their lives. I have training and experience in using Prolonged Exposure (PE) for PTSD, Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), all of which are in the treatment guidelines for PTSD. EMDR can be particularly effective for treating little-t traumatic experiences, which can bring welcome relief and new growth to clients who have been dealing with the aftermath of their traumatic experiences for years, sometimes for their whole lives.

EMDR, or eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing, is a structured therapy that focuses on past traumatic experiences. By thinking of the traumatic memory and pairing this with short sets of eye movements, EMDR aims to desensitize the client to the traumatic memory. While a rather strange way to go about doing therapy (I will say over and over that EMDR is a weird therapy), it works. EMDR is extensively researched. It was invented and refined in the late 1980s, and there have been dozens of randomized controlled clinical trials that have shown that it is safe and effective at reducing PTSD and trauma-related symptoms.

EMDR has been shown to be helpful in treating a wide range of issues, including:

-PTSD and trauma and stress related issues

-Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias

-Depression and bipolar disorders

-Dissociative disorders

-Grief and loss

-Sexual assault

-Violence and abuse

Unlike other trauma-related therapies, EMDR doesn't require homework or extensive time outside of counseling sessions. It can be done in weekly counseling sessions, and is billed the same as any other talk therapy intervention.

I encourage those who are interested in learning more about how EMDR could be helpful in their treatment to reach out to me using my contact form on this website, and to read more about the treatment through the EMDR International Association at www.EMDRIA.org.