EMDR
(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Some memories are like bad scripts.
Taking charge of your life is a lot harder than it sounds.
You can know what to do. You can believe all the right things. You can even really want to change.
But when your emotions kick in, you watch in amazement as you do something you know you’ll regret later. It’s completely irrational, but it is understandable.
Memories of past events can trigger knee-jerk reactions to things you came to believe were true about yourself. These beliefs might be: “It’s not safe to get close to people, I’m not important, something’s wrong with me, or it’s my fault.”
Even when we know these beliefs aren’t true, they put into words the way we felt at the time and influence our current perception about ourselves.
These feelings get triggered when facing a similar situation and then influence how we respond to people and how they respond to us.
Bad memories tend to be relived.
The experience of painful feelings, like rejection, abandonment, or shame, gets stored in our memories. Emotions buried alive never die. They stay locked away, hidden from our awareness, so we don’t become completely overwhelmed by them.
That’s what our brain’s adaptive processing system does, so we can keep going. It’s what needs to happen for our survival.
The problem is that the whole negative experience stays stored away exactly as we experienced it. All the pain. All the fear. All the negative things we believed were true about ourselves stay unchanged, just waiting for a present event that feels familiar to set them off.
When it does, everything we felt at the time and believed was true comes flooding back to us – just like we experienced them the first time.
Some memories are locked away but not forgotten.
It can be years later, but the feelings haven’t changed because they were isolated from reality.
They never linked up with anything more useful and adaptive – like the fact that you’re now an adult who has the power to make choices, the authority to stay away from life’s dangers, and the capacity to create new solutions.
Some memories are just waiting for the right trigger.
You may not have had a major trauma in your life, but at one time or another we’ve all felt like victims of our circumstances.
Research has shown that other kinds of life experiences can cause the same types of automatic reactions. When old memories, like bullying, rejection, or betrayal, suddenly get activated by a similar event, it can be like you stepped on a landmine. You explode with anger, resentment, frustration, or defeat.
Before you know it, you spout off, saying or doing things way out of proportion to what triggered them. Because this connection happens just below the conscious level, it can make you feel as if you have no idea what’s running your show.
EMDR helps reprocess bad memories.
In EMDR, the focus is on processing the memories that cause extreme feelings and reactions. By monitoring your current responses, we identify the places where you’re stuck in habitual patterns.
Your brain needs an update so that you can live in the here and now – not there and then. That’s the goal of EMDR. It follows an eight-step process to rewire your responses and change the way you feel and how you see yourself.
You begin by determining the memories that need to be targeted. Then you focus on resolving these by reviewing them relative to what you know is true today. As you do, the lies you believed are exposed; you contain the feelings that overwhelmed you.
The compassion you feel for what you went through takes over. You become free to choose your responses – to pursue the life you desire. You don’t forget the painful events; they just no longer control how you live your life today.
Reprogramming your brain is part of the process.
Your brain was designed to make associations with everything you think, feel, and do, automatically.
Just like a few negative experiences connected with how you feel about yourself overall, a few positive experiences begin the process of correcting everything that got distorted in your past.
God programmed you toward mental health. Once started, your system begins to update all your thoughts and feelings, so you see things in a new light for how they are.
In the final steps of EMDR, you process new feelings and beliefs for your future. You install new ways of seeing yourself. For instance, a rape victim who once felt powerless shifts to holding the firm beliefs: “I survived it, and I am strong.” A failed promotion that made you default to, “I’m stupid,” or “I don’t matter” shifts to “I can figure this out,” or “I will stand up for myself.”
EMDR helps change the script.
Using the momentum of these positive beliefs helps develop all sorts of new behaviors and skills.
Truth is powerful. It sets you free to overcome difficulties, create supportive relationships, and live the life you always wanted.
You’re no longer controlled by whatever happened to you but by the person you’ve become, healed and made new.
Let’s work to rewrite your script.
It’s time to live your life free from memories that keep you stuck, following the same lines over and over again.
EMDR makes a difference, and I am here to help.
Contact me today by calling (630) 999-8151!