Advanced EMDR Trauma Therapy
What is Advanced EMDR and why use Advanced EMDR in trauma treatment?
Advanced EMDR is an amazing and unique tool bringing together somatic and cognitive resourcing, which is used specifically to treat clients with trauma, complex trauma and PTSD. In fact, it is an amazing tool for most things, also being extremely effective in treating clients with anxiety and relational attachment trauma.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, it is what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us.”
The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Advanced EMDR is an amazing and unique tool bringing together somatic and cognitive resourcing, which is used specifically to treat clients with trauma, complex trauma and PTSD. In fact, it is an amazing tool for most things, also being extremely effective in treating clients with anxiety and relational attachment trauma.
“Trauma is not what happens to us, it is what happens inside of us as a result of what happens to us.”
The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk
What is EMDR?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It is a technique discovered by Francine Shapiro and further developed by Laurel Parnell with her Attachment Focused EMDR. It uses bi-lateral, side-to-side movements to re-connect and re-programme neural pathways. Most people who already know about the wonders of EMDR think of it only as the ‘eye movement stuff’ but it is so much more than that!
An Analogy for Trauma & How Advanced EMDR Therapy Can Heal
Imagine that you are watching a home video, a film of yourself, and the film you are seeing is quite ordinary. It’s playing along happily, when all of a sudden, some horrific scene pops up on the screen. It’s so awful you can’t even look at it, because it makes you feel sick and sweaty and like you want to get up and run away. But you can’t, because someone keeps on making you watch it, and it just becomes so overwhelming, that you think to yourself “I can’t escape, I’ll die if I have to keep living this.” And then that video gets paused, frozen on that horrific scene, the film never completed, so you never know what happens next.
And somehow, you get out of the room where the video is on pause, and your life continues. You try to go about your normal life, but all the while, the video is still on pause in that room, and the image is in the back of your mind. And you do normal things, pick up the kids from school, cook dinner, go to work, and maybe you almost forget about the room with the video in it, still on pause, because forgetting seems like the best thing to do. And neurobiologically it is. Your protection response comes to the fore and your mind and body become anaesthetised to the sensation, forgetting to remember.
But sometimes you get near to the entrance of that room, near the doorway, because something in the present reminds you that it is there, and every time that happens, you get that awful sick feeling. Occasionally, you might pop your head into the room. And there it is, that horrific scene, waiting for you on pause. And you run away again, because you have to, you are compelled to…
But the thing is, that the only way to heal that memory, that trauma, is to crack the door open a little and look inside, until eventually you can go into the room and rescue the You that has been stuck inside of that paused video. When we allow the video to complete to the end, we can change the story, change the ending, find out what happened afterwards, when it all turned into some version of ‘okay in the end’. This is what EMDR reprocessing does. We can safely re-set your nervous system, switch off the fight/flight setting and return your body to its regulated balance. Yes, the horrific thing happened, but it wasn’t the end. You survived to tell the story. And now you have un-paused the video, the part of you that was left trapped and frozen in time, can catch up with the older You, that survived, The You that now has a chance to thrive.
“Everything will be all right in the end… If it’s not all right, then it is not yet the end…”
‘Sonny’ from the film ‘The Exotic Marigold Hotel’.
And somehow, you get out of the room where the video is on pause, and your life continues. You try to go about your normal life, but all the while, the video is still on pause in that room, and the image is in the back of your mind. And you do normal things, pick up the kids from school, cook dinner, go to work, and maybe you almost forget about the room with the video in it, still on pause, because forgetting seems like the best thing to do. And neurobiologically it is. Your protection response comes to the fore and your mind and body become anaesthetised to the sensation, forgetting to remember.
But sometimes you get near to the entrance of that room, near the doorway, because something in the present reminds you that it is there, and every time that happens, you get that awful sick feeling. Occasionally, you might pop your head into the room. And there it is, that horrific scene, waiting for you on pause. And you run away again, because you have to, you are compelled to…
But the thing is, that the only way to heal that memory, that trauma, is to crack the door open a little and look inside, until eventually you can go into the room and rescue the You that has been stuck inside of that paused video. When we allow the video to complete to the end, we can change the story, change the ending, find out what happened afterwards, when it all turned into some version of ‘okay in the end’. This is what EMDR reprocessing does. We can safely re-set your nervous system, switch off the fight/flight setting and return your body to its regulated balance. Yes, the horrific thing happened, but it wasn’t the end. You survived to tell the story. And now you have un-paused the video, the part of you that was left trapped and frozen in time, can catch up with the older You, that survived, The You that now has a chance to thrive.
“Everything will be all right in the end… If it’s not all right, then it is not yet the end…”
‘Sonny’ from the film ‘The Exotic Marigold Hotel’.
How does EMDR therapy help to heal trauma?
EMDR helps to bring the prefrontal cortex back online through ‘bi-lateral stimulation’, so that the trauma memory can be re-processed and updated with the contextual information that was excluded in that moment, and in the reflection that would have occurred after the event. This information must be processed both in the mind (cognitively) and in the body (somatically) in order for healing and recovery to take place, which means that the memory must be safely re-accessed so that what wanted to happen in the body at the time, is allowed to move through as it should have. When the body can complete the actions it would have taken to survive, healing can then occur.
How is the Advanced EMDR Protocol different?
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Cognitive approaches alone cannot heal all parts of a trauma memory. We need also to take it to the body. This is where Advanced EMDR is unique in its use of somatic resourcing, using neuroscience backed techniques to help you reprocess what happened to you, as well as what wanted to happen in the body but couldn’t.
Advanced EMDR uses positive resourcing, somatic embodiment tools and bi-lateral stimulation (left to right eye movements, tapping or clicking) to reprocess distressing memories. In Advanced EMDR there is a strong emphasis on allowing the body to heal through the completion and positive mis-matching of the physical actions that wanted to be taken but could not. A slower pace of embodiment helps teach your nervous system to enlarge your ‘window of tolerance’, avoiding the overwhelm experienced in the original event and helping you to heal the pain more quickly, without the risk of re-traumatisation. To learn more about A Neurobiological Explanation of Trauma you can read my blog article. |
From one small drop comes a flow of change
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You can read more about other specific therapeutic techniques I use in the Cognitive Hypnotherapy and NLP Coaching pages of this website.
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