EMDR Therapy: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

person walking through a narrow canyon representing the healing journey in EMDR therapy

What is EMDR and

how will it help me?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR therapy) is a form of psychotherapy that is evidenced based, highly researched and used all over the world. It is different from talk therapy and many traditional approaches to therapy that focus on your thoughts and understanding thoughts to try and change how you feel or give you coping skills to manage distressing feelings.

Instead, EMDR therapy works with the body’s natural healing process. Sometimes this natural healing process can become blocked. When this happens, distressing memories and emotional responses can remain stored in the brain and body.

How EMDR Therapy Reprocesses Memories

EMDR therapy helps rewire memory networks and desensitize disturbing memories, feelings, and body sensations.

When the emotional charge is removed from negative core beliefs, the pain associated with those memories is reduced. As a result, new adaptive thoughts and different feelings can begin to emerge.

Memories are not erased. However, as the processing takes place, the body releases stored trauma and the mind develops new beliefs, helping to rewire the brain.

EMDR for PTSD and

Sports-related stress disorder

EMDR therapy has long been recognized as a top treatment protocol for trauma and PTSD, but more research in the last decade has shown that it is also effective for treating anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and many other mental health concerns.

Incredible change can take place utilizing Intensive EMDR therapy treatment and the understanding that:

“All repetitive sports-performance problems (RSPPs), like the yips and severe slumps, have tauma bases that operate outside the athlete’s conscious awareness and control, and unless the underlying physical and emotional traumas are determined and directly addressed, the block might reduce but not fully release.”(This is Your Brain on Sports by Grand and Goldberg).

Understanding Sports-Related Stress in Athletes

Often, athletes, coaches, family, fans, and support staff do not understand how to support an athlete, and frustration builds as positive self-talk coaching, mindfulness tools, and other supports fall short of addressing the trauma.

A better understanding of sports-related stress disorder helps athletes find and treat trauma and injury experienced both as an athlete and a human.

Those who experience trauma carry it in their bodies and brains long after the trauma is over. EMDR therapy helps reduce emotional pain, allows the nervous system to calm, and helps the person know “it is over now.”

After the treatment, greater system integration within the body enhances optimal performance.

EMDR therapy for sports trauma

and life trauma

Not sure where to start? Often, there is a past experience or experiences that get stuck and create mental blocks, and this can be treated with EMDR therapy.

Often, such blocking experiences are not seen as traumatic, leading to greater frustration and confusion.

These blocks can be identified in many ways: through the intake and evaluation process and through somatically focused EMDR.

Understanding the Nervous System Response

Understanding interpersonal neurobiology often strengthens a client’s ability to have self-compassion for an injury, a setback, or a stressor they cannot just think through.

By understanding the nervous system and different state responses (fight-or-flight or freeze responses that happen below conscious awareness), people feel more empowered to heal.

We often see that our body’s response has guided us to a place that needs support.

For example, many athletes struggle with a freeze response in their nervous systems and are unable to perform at their optimal level.