EMDR Therapy in Vancouver
Sometimes you understand what happened, but it still affects you.
Sometimes you understand what happened, but it still affects you.
You may know that something is over and understand, logically, that you’re safe now. But certain memories, situations, or interactions can still bring up strong reactions that seem to happen before you have much say in them.
EMDR is one way of working with experiences from the past that still feel very present.
What is EMDR?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a structured form of therapy that was originally developed to treat trauma and PTSD.
Unlike traditional talk therapy, EMDR doesn’t rely on talking through an experience in detail over and over again. Instead, we identify a memory or experience that continues to affect you and pay attention to the thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, and beliefs connected to it.
During parts of the process, we use something called bilateral stimulation. This might involve moving your eyes from side to side or another form of alternating left-right stimulation while you briefly focus on aspects of the experience.
Over time, the aim is for the memory to feel less emotionally charged and less connected to the reactions you’re having in the present. You still remember what happened, but it may begin to feel more clearly like something that happened then rather than something your mind and body need to keep responding to now.
What can EMDR help with?
People often associate EMDR with major traumatic events, but difficult experiences don’t always fit neatly into that category.
EMDR may be useful when an earlier experience still seems connected to how you feel or respond today. That might include:
Difficult childhood or family experiences
Experiences of rejection, abandonment, criticism, or humiliation that still carry a lot of weight
Relationship experiences that continue to affect how safe or secure you feel with other people
Strong emotional reactions or triggers that seem connected to something from the past
Negative beliefs about yourself that developed through difficult experiences
Sometimes there is one obvious memory to work with. Other times, there may be a series of smaller experiences that shaped how you learned to see yourself, other people, or the world.
We can figure that out together.
What does EMDR therapy actually look like?
You won’t walk into your first appointment and immediately be asked to revisit the hardest thing that has ever happened to you.
EMDR is a process, and preparation is part of it.
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Before doing any processing, we’ll spend time understanding what brings you to therapy, what you’re hoping to work on, and how you tend to respond when difficult emotions or memories come up.
We’ll talk about how EMDR works and what you can expect. We’ll also make sure you have ways to stay grounded and let me know if something feels like too much.
There is no prize for getting through EMDR quickly. We can slow down, pause, or spend more time preparing whenever that makes sense.
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When you’re ready, we’ll choose a specific experience or memory to work with.
I’ll ask you to notice different pieces of the experience, such as an image, thought, emotion, or sensation in your body. We’ll then use short periods of bilateral stimulation while you notice what comes up.
You don’t need to make anything happen or figure out what you’re supposed to be thinking about. Your job is mostly to notice. We’ll check in regularly, and you remain in control of the process throughout the session.
You also don’t need to tell me every detail of what happened for EMDR to be useful.
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EMDR isn’t only about what happens while we’re actively processing a memory. We’ll also pay attention to what you notice afterwards and whether anything begins to shift in your everyday life.
A memory may feel less intense. A situation that used to bring up a strong reaction may feel more manageable. You may notice that something you believed about yourself no longer feels quite as true.
Sometimes changes are subtle, and sometimes the work brings up things we want to explore further. We’ll make sense of that together rather than treating EMDR as a stand-alone technique that happens separately from the rest of therapy.
EMDR isn’t the right fit for everything
EMDR can be a helpful way of working with trauma and difficult past experiences, but it isn’t automatically the best approach for every person or every problem.
We’ll talk about what you want help with and decide together whether EMDR makes sense. We may use it as one part of our work, spend some sessions doing more traditional therapy, or decide that another approach fits you better.
You also don’t need to know whether something “counts” as trauma before asking about EMDR.
