EMDR Therapy in Mobile, AL

Do you feel emotionally distressed by traumatic memories?

Do you find yourself getting easily triggered in everyday situations?

Do people tell you you’re overreacting or that you’re too sensitive?

Do you suffer from severe anxiety, fear, and panic?

Living with Traumatic Stress

You feel completely out of control of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. You either feel engulfed by your emotions or you feel nothing at all, just numb. One day you’re up, the next day you’re down. You have tried everything you can to understand and heal but you keep hitting a wall. You have read every self-help book imaginable, gone to therapist after therapist, and still, you feel the same.

There are times when your anxiety hits you like a wave, and it feels all-consuming. It’s at these times when you want to run and hide from it all. It has controlled your life for far too long and you feel like you’re at your wit’s end.

You want to feel in control of your life. You want to feel like yourself again. You want to heal on a deeper level.

Using EMDR, I help you gain a sense of understanding, control, and confidence so that you can get back to being yourself and living the life you want to live.

The Impact of Trauma

Trauma and adverse life experiences have a profound impact on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It can be difficult to grasp the ways in which we have been affected, especially if the experiences occurred during early childhood.

Many painful experiences are not consciously remembered but may still lead to problems later on in life. This is due to the way the brain interprets and stores information related to the memory.

Our brains naturally sort through and store memories, holding onto information that seems to be important and helpful and letting go of the rest. Since our brains are not perfect, there may be times when they are unable to process memories in an adaptive way.

These memories get “stuck” and can lead to complications later in life such as flashbacks, unexplained emotional/mental and physical reactions and symptoms, and other maladaptive behaviors.

EMDR in a Nutshell

EMDR, which stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, is a rapid, brain-based/neuroscience-based treatment that uses eye movements or another form of bilateral (back and forth) movement to help resolve traumatic memories.

Using neuroscience as its foundation, it unlocks and fosters the brain’s natural capacity for healing. EMDR helps to reduce the intensity of emotional distress related to painful memories.

EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. in the late 1980s. Though it was originally developed to treat trauma, it has been shown to be effective for a variety of other issues, some of which include

• anxiety

• panic attacks

• phobias

• depression

• grief and loss

• pain

• chronic illness