EMDR Therapy
Amie Lowery-Luyties is recognized & certified by the EMDR International Association as a “certified EMDR therapist”.
EMDR at Long Beach Therapy
At Long Beach Therapy, we utilize a variety of tools and techniques to help our clients reach their goals. In addition to regular talk therapy we also offer researched based methods of helping clients through their issues. One of those research based methods is called EMDR.
Although EMDR Therapy was first used to treat complex PTSD and “simple” traumas, EMDR isn’t just for PTSD. EMDR can be very effective with depression, anxiety, phobias, self-esteem issues, anger issues, grief and loss, as well as PTSD and trauma. Many people choose EMDR because they have been in years of talk therapy and haven’t seen much progress. EMDR tends to be a quicker treatment compared to other types of therapy styles.
EMDR stands for: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
It uses similar eye movements that you have during REM sleep to help you process information in a way that that helps your Cerebral Cortex (logical brain), Limbic (emotional brain) and Brainstem (primitive brain) work together to heal past wounds. These wounds can be from trauma, or simply from adverse experiences (e.g. when you were 8 years old and struck out at baseball and you glanced at your parent who looked upset, which in turn caused you to doubt yourself and and eventually led to self-esteem troubles).
Does EMDR hurt?
No, EMDR does not hurt in any way and does NOT use any sort of shock treatment. In EMDR, the client has a few options. (1) They can hold little buzzers that feel like your cell phone when it is on vibrate mode. It doesn’t hurt or feel weird. (2) You can listen to an audio where you wear a headset and sounds alternate at a certain level (which is controlled by your therapist)). (3) You can watch a “light bar” which basically consists of a long light where you follow the light with your eyes. (4) You can watch your therapists fingers (about a foot in front of you) as they go back and forth with their hand (they don’t touch you at all).
SO WHAT DOES THAT MEAN IN NON-SCIENTIST LANGUAGE????
EMDR works to target the specific wounds in your memory bank that cause you problems and then helps you to take the “charge” (the intense feelings) associated with those memories so that you are in less pain. The best way I can describe EMDR is through this analogy: (The iPad in this analogy represents your memory that causes you issues and the app is like EMDR): You are at home and you can’t find your iPad. You look everywhere for it. You aren’t sure if it got stolen or it was lost somewhere and you are trying to think about the last time you used it. Finally, you give up. You talk to a friend and they tell you about the “find my iPhone/iPad app”. The app shows you that the iPad is at home and you are able to send the iPad an alert. You hear the alert and find that it was under a towel that was on the counter. It was within reach all along, but you didn’t have the tool before to help. EMDR IS LIKE THE APP that finds your iPad. You were looking and looking and couldn’t find it, and the app told you right where you can find it. In EMDR, there is a structured process to find the specific wounds in your life that cause you to struggle and gives you a method (bi-lateral stimulation) to process them. The amazing thing about EMDR is that it is often times a specific memory that you don’t even associate with your problems, but it could very well have been the spark that started those problems. With EMDR, if you take out the “core/base” memory, then the problems don’t have a “charged” memory to support them and therefore the problems start disappearing.
How this might play out for someone with trauma: WITHOUT EMDR: A person lives their life not knowing when they will be triggered and be thrown back into the feeling of the moment the trauma happened at any given time. They experience it with their mind and body in a very scary way. They are brought back to that moment like a time machine they can’t control. WITH EMDR: The trauma feels like it is in the past. It is a memory, but it isn’t a “charged” memory (meaning it doesn’t elicit strong feelings or a strong reaction anymore).
Although there is no guarantee with any type of therapy, EMDR is showing promising results in research. If EMDR isn’t the treatment method you would prefer, we do also offer other treatment approaches such as CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), TFCBT (Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), and Solution-Focused Therapy.
If you have questions, please call me at 562.310.9741.
Therapists at Long Beach Therapy who provide EMDR as an option for therapy (they also provide traditional talk therapy): Amie Lowery-Luyties, and Jeanessa Blair.