EMDR Therapy is a type of therapy offered to process traumatic memories. I have been certified to provide this therapy since April 2016.
I am one of the few providers in South Dakota who have extensive training and experience in providing this therapy to young children. You will find providers in Sioux Falls that utilize EMDR with teens and older, however, I have yet to find anyone in this area who will utilize EMDR with children as young as 4 years old as I do. There are special ways to meet the obligations of the 8 phases of EMDR treatment when dealing with young children and special training is required. If you do find someone who uses EMDR Therapy on young children in the Sioux Falls area besides myself, please give me their name! I would like to network with them as I am always out to learn new things. With kids, especially very young ones, you have to change your techniques regularly or they get bored with you.
About EMDR
Most of the time, the body routinely manages new information and experiences without being aware of it. But when something traumatic happens, the brain cannot process information in the same way it ordinarily does. The body’s natural coping mechanisms become overloaded, resulting in traumatic experiences becoming frozen in the brain, unable to be processed. Those unprocessed memories are held in the limbic system of the brain, disconnected from the part of the brain that stores and processes memories.
As a result, traumatic memories can be triggered when you have an experience similar to the traumatic event that you lived through. Remembering that trauma may feel just as bad as going through it the first time because the images, sounds, smells, and feelings have not changed or been processed.
Think of your brain like a computer, or information processing system. Your computer has a virus that is locked away somewhere in the internal parts of the system. Your IT person first has to reach that part of the computer. But he or she doesn’t physically go inside your computer. (Well sometimes they do, but not very often. Most of the time they manipulate the keyboard to get in and do something to it.)
In EMDR therapy, we first need to activate that system where the memory is stored without actually physically going inside it. We need to awaken the neural network where the traumatic memory is stored. This is done using bilateral stimulation of the brain. Now, that soundsmuch worse than what it really is.
When Francine Shapiro first discovered EMDR therapy, she unlocked that system using eye movements-a back and forth motion with your eyes. Left, then right, then left, then right, over and over again for a certain set of times. It is thought that what those eye movements were doing was stimulating the neural networks in the brain around where the traumatic memories are stored, much like your eyes move when you are sleeping at night and go through REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement). Much later it was found that other bilateral stimulation such as tapping left and then right over and over on knees, shoulders, or hands, or using a buzzing device that is held in each hand and buzzes this same way, also unlocked the neural networks.
Once you unlock the system and the memory is brought forward, yep, you guessed it, you will experience those old bad feelings again. But by continuing the back and forth stimulation while you feel those feelings, your brain finally begins to process that memory. It begins to chew it up and digest it, just like your body processes and gets rid of food. Just like you are processing a file on a computer and fitting it into a different, smaller space in the computer’s memory. Just like you have taken the zing out of the memory and it is just some old thing that happened one day long ago that doesn’t bother you anymore. The idea of it may bother you-like “I can’t believe that person did that to me”-but you won’t feelit bother you anymore. And when it gets processed, the physical feelings go away. That lump in your throat? Gone. That sick feeling in your stomach? Gone. Your heart racing so fast that you can’t contain it? Gone. All because the bilateral stimulation of the brain unlocked the system and then desensitized your brain to the effects of the traumatic memory.
You will never forget what happened to you. But the sting will be gone and you will be able to live your life more freely than ever before. You may not be triggered anymore, and if you are, you will be more able to handle it through self-talk and those other methods your therapist tried to teach you that your rapidly beating heart and feeling of panic never allowed you to use.
EMDR Therapy is widely used with combat veterans and those who have served in the military to help them with traumatic things they have witnessed or experienced while serving their country. I am doing what I can to try to become registered as a provider for Tricare, the insurance that those in the military use. As usual, there is lots of red tape I am having to go through but I will not give up!
More good news is that EMDR is something that can be used right alongside all other forms of therapy so it is not something that you have to choose exclusively while leaving out other forms of beneficial therapies.
For more information on EMDR therapy, check out these links:
https://www.emdria.org/page/119
If you are interested in this life-changing therapy, contact Bonnie today!