EMDR Therapy
Our practitioners provide a thorough and accurate diagnosis for specific mood disorders. Our evaluations will help you and your provider determine the best course of action.
EMDR
What is EMDR?
Why EMDR?
EMDR therapy requires less in-depth discussion of challenging topics than other therapies. EMDR instead focuses on altering the emotions, thoughts, or behaviors that result from a painful experience (trauma). This process allows your brain to continue a previously arrested healing process.
We tend to think the words “mind” and “brain” are synonymous, but when we’re speaking about psychology, the brain refers to the physical structure in which thoughts and other anatomic functions take place, while the mind is the experience of those thoughts and feelings making up our sense of identity. In a sense, the mind and brain are one and the same, yet also distinguishable. The brain involves networks of communicating neurons that control bodily functions like our heartbeat, breathing, and pain.
Adaptive Information Processing
EMDR leans on the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, a theory outlining how the brain stores traumatic memories.
During everyday situations, your brain stores new information in the context of other memories. This enables you to apply old information to new information. During traumatic events, that networking doesn’t form correctly. The brain can silo these memories away from the existing network so that neither new nor old information can contextualize the traumatic event. This prevents new emotions (like acceptance) from connecting with the trauma.
However, new experiences can trigger the emotions and thoughts from the traumatic experience. This can create a detrimental reinforcement, in which more situations are associated with the trauma response. Rather than having new and old safe memories inform how we process the trauma, the trauma can color how we process new memories. This can be a difficult cycle to break alone.
