Turns Out There Is a Magic Wand in Therapy!

I often say to clients, there is no magic wand in therapy. What you put into the process has a lot to do with what you’ll get out of it. While I absolutely still believe that is true, I do have to make an adjustment to that speech.

It turns out I do kind of have a magic wand. And it’s awesome.

My magic wand is part of a therapy approach called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing). EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (I use a funny extendable wand to guide eye movements) to reprocess traumatic memories. Did your eyes just glaze over?

Translation: Our past experiences feed our experiences of the here & now. When we experience trauma (anything that overrides our ability to cope in the moment), half of our brain goes offline. One part that goes offline is the hippocampus, whose job is to stamp time on events & to help form a narrative. When it goes offline, it can’t do its job.

These traumatic events then get linked with a negative belief about ourselves or about the world (I’m not safe, I should have known, it’s all my fault, I’m not good enough, I’m weak, etc.) These negative beliefs are similar to our shitty first drafts. In a hard moment, we default to these thoughts.

Often these traumatic memories are flashbulb memories that we can still see, hear, taste, smell, and feel when we think about them today. EMDR helps drain the emotional charge of these experiences and correct the negative belief. The magic wand of EMDR will not magically make you a brand new person person, but it can offer you peace from experiences that have long impacted you. Sounds awesome, right?

So I guess there is a magic wand after all.

If you want peace from past experiences that still seem to be interrupting your life, contact me for your free 15 minute consultation so we can get started with EMDR therapy in Dublin, CA today.