Trauma & EMDR Therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) is a type of therapy that research has shown to be effective in helping people work through difficult experiences in their lives that involve some level of trauma. People with trauma often have symptoms such as intense anxiety, fear, and PTSD symptoms such as nightmares and flashbacks. There is a broad range of traumatic events that EMDR can be useful with, including loss of a loved one, change in life circumstances, abusive experiences, combat/war experiences and traumatic events such as natural disasters and auto accidents.
Our brains and our bodies are amazingly powerful with incredible capacities to store our life experiences as memories. When we have difficult and painful experiences in our life, we automatically store these as memories, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we have direct access to these memories and can readily speak about painful past experiences. Other times these memories are not so immediately obvious to us – yet the memories are very much stored in our brain and body.
If these painful past experiences were never fully worked through/reprocessed, these painful memories can continue to trigger us in our present-day life. A trauma from many years ago can continue to negatively affect our current life in obvious or subtle ways. EMDR is a type of psychotherapy that allows the brain and body to reprocess (work through) the painful memories that we carry around.
Extensive scientific research studies on EMDR’s effectiveness have demonstrated that patients frequently report experiencing a significant improvement in their quality of life. Once these painful past experiences are reprocessed, the memory no longer carries the same emotional intensity that it did previously. The person feels free to let go of the intense negative thoughts and emotions attached to that memory. When this happens, the person experiences a liberating feeling and no longer feels trapped by the past event. With EMDR, we still hold the memories of our past experiences but no longer hold the intense negative charge of the past trauma.
Dr. Yellen finds EMDR to be a powerful therapeutic treatment for trauma and she is an EMDR Certified Therapist. For more information about EMDR, including its historical development and research outcomes, please visit https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/.
EMDR Intensives
Typically, people have 1 EMDR psychotherapy session (50 minute hour) once a week. Some patients choose to utilize an EMDR Intensive format which consists of multiple psychotherapy sessions in a day. For example, we may meet for a 2 hour EMDR Intensive which allows us a longer stretch of time to work on the trauma. Patients choose this option when they would like to accomplish more trauma work in a compressed time frame. Please note that EMDR Intensives are optional (not mandatory) and patients can choose to do EMDR in the traditional once a week therapy hour format.
- Patients interested in EMDR Intensives should be aware that insurance companies usually only reimburse for 1 psychotherapy session per day, so only the first hour of an EMDR Intensive would likely be eligible for out of network insurance reimbursement.
