Healing emotional wounds (trauma resolution)
All too often, a person's depression or anxiety is rooted in overwhelming
emotional experiences that they are trying to forget.
These may involve recent experiences such as witnessing the sudden death
of a loved one, a recent accident, threats or actual violence, disfigurement,
etc. Trauma may also involve early life experiences such as abandonment, incest,
physical or sexual abuse by care-givers. Whatever and
whenever the cause, these emotional scars often do not go away merely with time.
The human brain imprints traumatic memory differently than it processes regular
memory. Without proper treatment, traumatic memory can greatly reduce a person's
happiness for the rest of their life. Fortunately, there is now a very efficient
and effective form of treatment for trauma known as EMDR (Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR is a
more complicated form of psychotherapy than mere counseling. It has been the
most researched form of treatment for trauma and has been proven effective in
many research studies. Both the American Psychological Association and the
Defense Department find it an effective type of treatment.
Researchers at Harvard have found that EMDR helps rewire trauma related memory
in the brain. They found that post-treatment memories of trauma involve more
parts of the brain than did the same memories before treatment. The result is
that the trauma related emotional pain is greatly reduced or eliminated. It is
common for EMDR to completely eliminate the pain of previously mind-shattering
memories. For more information on EMDR, you can visit the international website
www.emdria.org .
In addition to receiving advanced training in EMDR,
I am also certified for being proficient in EMDR from the EMDRIA International
Association. I also employ some of my own technology based on my knowledge of
psychophysiology. For some of my clients, I take physiological readings from
electrodes so that I can monitor certain reflexes within their brain while we're
working with their traumatic memory. For a very technical discussion about some
of this technology, you can read my technical article already published in the
EMDRIA Journal: Reversing Reciprocal Suppression in the Anterior Cingulate
Cortex. In addition to regular EMDR, I have developed other techniques which I
call interactive cognitive-motor interweaves. I use these techniques within EMDR
to help stimulate the brain to even more rapidly neurologically rewire its
representation of traumatic memory. It is not uncommon for decades of depression
or anxiety to be completely stopped after EMDR therapy. The course of therapy
can take as little as 1 to 2 months for a simple trauma. For complex repetitive
traumas during a person's childhood, treatment can take much longer.
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