Experiencing Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
I like to refer to EMDR as “active dreamwork”.
One of the theories regarding why EMDR is so effective is that it harnesses the body’s natural healing mechanisms, for example, the daily pruning that our brains do while we sleep, specifically while we dream (Rapid Eye Movement or REM sleep).
By simulating this while we are awake, we can get “frozen” information moving that is held in the body, i.e. traumatic memories, so that we can weave it into the rest of what has actually worked for us. This way we can break the cycle of being led around by the pain of our past, often in ways we don’t realize.
As it says in the name, eye movements can stimulate this process, but my preference or specialty for doing so is to use sound.
The power of sound has tended to bring my patients quickly to a place of peace, like how a familiar scent can take you back to old times.
This service can be provided virtually!
Janet Forelo, LCSW – May 2021
Brainspotting
From “Brainspotting: The Revolutionary Therapy for Rapid and Effective Change” by David Grand, PhD
“The motto of Brainspotting is, “Where you look affects how you feel.” If something is bothering you, how you feel about it will literally change depending on whether you look off to your right or to your left. Our eyes and brains are intricately woven together, and vision is the primary way that we, as humans, orient ourselves to our environment. Signals sent from our eyes are deeply processed in the brain. The brain then reflexively and intuitively redirects where we look, moment to moment. The brain is an incredible processing machine that digests and organizes everything we experience. But trauma can overwhelm the brain’s processing capacity, leaving behind pieces of the trauma, frozen in an unprocessed state. Brainspotting uses our field of vision to find where we are holding these trauma in our brain. Just as the eyes naturally scan the outside environments for information, they can also be used to scan our inside environments – our brains – for information. Brainspotting uses the visual field to turn the “scanner” back on itself and guide the brain to find lost internal information. By keeping the gaze focused on a specific external spot, we maintain the brain’s focus on the specific internal spot where trauma is stored, in order to promote the deep processing that leads to the trauma’s release and resolution.”
This service can be provided virtually!