EMDR Therapy Gold Coast, Tweed, Kingscliff

 

Lorretta is a fully trained EMDR practitioner with the EMDR Academy, Australia 

The research says EMDR works for 80% of people. So the success rate is pretty impressive.

It’s a reprocessing therapy similar to exposure therapy.

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EMDR therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach based on a range of psychological, physiological, and neurobiological principles known as the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) Model. 

It was initially developed for trauma-related mental health issues such as PTSD, however emerging research is investigating its clinical efficacy for other mental health conditions, in a variety of contexts and treatment settings with diverse populations. 

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Research into applications of EMDR for presentations other than PTSD is growing. Systemic reviews investigating the efficacy of EMDR in treating the following conditions have identified promising results, however all have noted a need for further research to consolidate these effects:

• Depression, including relapse prevention

• Anxiety, including panic, phobia, and behavioural/somatic symptoms

• Substance use disorder

• Attachment and early childhood interpersonal trauma

 

Changing negative beliefs and the associated feelings can take a long time with regular psychological work. Processing with EMDR is similar to exposure therapy but at a fastened rate whilst still in a safe, respectful and trusting space.

 

If you’ve done any psychological work you know that you can work hard to gain insight into what happened to you and why you feel as you do. You work hard to change your thoughts and your reactions to triggers. Even though you get better and better at these skills, you’re often left with the body sensations – your head knows you shouldn’t believe these things about yourself (you’re not good enough, don’t deserve, not safe) but deep down inside you don’t. EMDR changes this.

 

EMDR can be used at any stage of the healing process from various traumas and lived experiences.

 

Heal: Reprocess Traumas

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EMDR can be used for reprocessing past memories that continue to haunt us. For example, witness to violence, abuse, abused as a child , triggered , and still feel the world is unsafe and people can’t be trusted. These memories get stored differently in your nervous system so the memory stays vivid and the emotions very strong. EMDR unlocks these memories from your nervous system and allows your brain to start the process of healing itself. This can happen very quickly.

 

 

Grow: Learning Skills and Changing Behaviours

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When we’re learning new skills it helps to have a template of our new behaviour. EMDR can help build that template. In a similar way to transform, we can build positive templates for the changes you are initiating.

Let’s say you’re wanting to change the patterns in a relationship. We might build a template for you soothing yourself (if you tend to fear rejection, be reactive ) or of you becoming more comfortable with intimacy (if you find that difficult).  We can even build some positive internal resources for you. Maybe you didn’t have a lot of encouragement growing up. We can build in an Inner Coach – an internalised someone who gives you the encouragement and advice you crave.

 

Similar to psychological therapy, you maintain control of your own therapy and Lorretta is your support and guide to healing.

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Transform: Performance & Life Enhancement

EMDR can also be used for performance and life enhancement function to build positive templates, reduce anxiety around your performance, and banish things like procrastination, self-sabotage, and fear of failure.

 

EMDR works 

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EMDR is considered Best Practice for PTSD ( Post Traumatic Stress Disorder ) 

And if you’re more interested in the performance side – EMDR is used extensively with Olympic Athletes, Performance Artists, and High Achieving Business People.

 

What is the Process of EMDR?

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1. Assessment: we will need to work out what your triggers are and what maladaptive beliefs have formed. This will take a minimum of 2 -3 sessions (or more if there’s a lot of Heal to do) depending on the level of your past ‘stuff’.

2. Preparation: we work on building your emotional resilience. You will learn some Mindfulness skills (this makes the processing work better and faster), and anything else that will help build your internal resources. This can take 1 session if you already have these skills. How many sessions it takes will depend on you and how much you practice outside our sessions.

3. Processing: this is where the fun starts. These are double sessions. You follow a light bar and the number of processing sessions will depend on how fast you process and how much ‘stuff’ we’re processing. You will have an idea of how many processing sessions you will need after the Assessment phase.

4. Consolidation: some people may need some future template work, others will just need a final session to bring it all together, talk about the changes and look at how they’re going to get on with their lives. Some people may need to learn some different ways of being in the world, which would then take us into the therapy realm. You will know where you fall in the early stages of the process so there will be no surprises for you

 

How EMDR Works

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This is one of the harder questions to answer but there are plenty of theories. One of them is that EMDR is an Information Processing therapy. When you have experiences that are associated with strong emotions, information is stored differently in the brain. Apparently there are 3 components – the ‘this happened then that happened’ part of the memory, the emotions we felt, and the meaning we make of it all. When all these components are taken care of the memory gets stored away and doesn’t cause us any trouble.

 

When the components don’t get taken care of properly we can have all sorts of problems with feeling things like fear with no apparent trigger or having really vivid images of the memory that elicit the same feelings as they did at the moment the original event happened. We might also make like ‘the whole world is unsafe’ when in reality it was just at that moment that things were unsafe.

 

EMDR unlocks something in your brain so you can put all the components together in a healthy way.

The eye movements mimic REM sleep (where we do all our dreaming and processing of things that have happened to us). But instead of our brains being free to dream or have intrusive nightmares we are focusing on the memory that hasn’t been properly processed and we’re processing that.

So very quickly all the components come together and we can be free from the distress we previously experienced.

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Online Bookings accepted www.dharmapsychology.com.au

lorretta@dharmapsychology.com.au

M: 0433005453

Fully trained EMDR Practitioner, EMDR Academy, Australia