Suffering from childhood trauma can leave a lifelong impact. If you endured a traumatic experience as a child, you might still be living with the effects today. It can be difficult to truly heal without professional support.
Perhaps you lived through ongoing trauma when you were young, and now, you want to seek help and begin the healing process. Yet you’re hesitant to pursue talk therapy because the thought of sharing your experiences with a stranger makes you nervous. Thankfully, there are other approaches to treatment. For example, you might benefit from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, also known as EMDR. This method involves using bilateral stimulation to help you process traumatic memories and break down the associated negative thoughts. Here’s how EMDR therapy can help you heal from childhood trauma.
Release Physical Tension
Childhood trauma, like any other form of trauma, is stored in the body. Your body holds on to the emotions related to the event long after the event itself has passed. You might suffer from headaches, muscle aches, stomach pains, or other physical ailments like insomnia because of your past trauma. EMDR therapy allows you to finally release the physical tension that you’ve been holding on to for years. Your therapist will guide you through a full-body scan so that you can target any specific areas of discomfort.
Reduce Distress Upon Exposure
Perhaps you try to avoid certain triggers and stressors in your daily life that remind you of your trauma. This might interfere with your professional and personal obligations, but you fear being exposed to triggers that will bring memories of your trauma flooding back. During EMDR therapy sessions, your therapist will help you reduce the distress you feel when you reflect upon these memories. You’ll be able to adjust to moving through life while occasionally facing reminders of your past. But now, you’ll have the tools you need to center yourself and move forward.
Learn Coping Skills
Bilateral stimulation isn’t the only focus of EMDR sessions. Your therapist will also spend time working with you on coping skills that you can apply outside of sessions. This could include techniques like journaling, visualization, or even coming up with soothing mantras or affirmations. Part of EMDR therapy involves breaking down negative beliefs related to your trauma and establishing more positive, realistic beliefs. These coping mechanisms can help you build up beliefs that serve you well.
Returning to Equilibrium
You might struggle to calm down and focus on the present when you’re distressed. After living through trauma, it can be difficult to access this state of equilibrium. This is especially true if you suffered from trauma as a child, as you might never have had the chance to learn key emotional regulation skills. In EMDR therapy, this is a skill that you will work on extensively. Your therapist will walk you through the process of returning to equilibrium when you feel intense emotions coming on.
Avoid Retraumatization
Talking about your trauma in therapy can be hard. After all, you don’t want to relive those memories again. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that you have been reluctant to attend talk therapy. But in EMDR therapy, you will not have to recount the specific details of your trauma to your therapist. Yes, you’ll have to give them a general idea of the reasons why you’re seeking therapy. However, you won’t have to go into detail about memories that are truly painful.
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Are you trying to heal from childhood trauma? Working with an EMDR therapist can help. Reach out to us today to discuss your options for scheduling your first session.
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