Eye Movement EMDR | Dublin

EMDR is a system used in Psychotherapy that allows you to process and reduce emotional experiences and feelings from your past that continue to play out in your present day life, that you are unable to talk about yet. It can involve an unexpected event, trauma, a natural disaster, an assault, abuse, rape, accident, and more…

What is EMDR?

EMDR is a technique that addresses conditions where strong emotional feelings and trauma are associated with life experiences. The trauma may well have happened years ago, or even months ago and yet they still play a major role in impacting your daily life through post traumatic symptoms such as anxiety, numbing, low self-esteem, intrusive negative memories, emotional flooding, nightmares, and difficulty getting on with your life.
We also unintentionally develop patterns of negative thinking and feelings about ourselves in relation to a trauma, an event, such as “I caused it” or “I’m a bad person.”

These negative thoughts and feelings may influence you in how you think and feel about yourself in relation to the trauma and also in the here and now.

Following EMDR sessions, you are able to talk freely about that experience. Most importantly, EMDR can eliminate stress surrounding the traumatic event, allowing new life in the once traumatised and emotionally difficult memory.

Can EMDR help me?

EMDR is a remarkable treatment method used to heal the symptoms of trauma and other emotional conditions.

EMDR is the most effective and rapid method for healing PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) as shown by extensive scientific research studies.

In general, you are an excellent candidate for EMDR if you have experienced:

    Difficulty in trusting people
    Fear of being alone
    Lack of motivation
    Anxiety or panic
    Frequent feelings of guilt or shame
    Poor concentration or memory
    Explosive or irrational anger
    Trouble sleeping or nightmares
    Worrying or brooding
    Poor self-image
    Grief

    Serious relationship problems
    Stage fright or performance anxiety
    Obsessive or compulsive behaviour
    Chronic feelings of detachment
    Extreme, inexplicable fears
    Bad temper
    Physical or sexual abuse
    A crime or serious accident as victim or witness
    A natural disaster
    A traumatic event

Because EMDR has the power to relieve any type of emotional block or fear, It can also be used to enhance the performance of athletes, actors, musicians, students, public speakers and executives by reducing performance anxiety and stage fright.

How does EMDR work?

When disturbing experiences, events, happen, they are stored in the brain with all the sights, sounds, thoughts, smells and feelings that accompany them. When a person is very upset, the brain seems to be unable to process the experience as it would normally and so the negative thoughts and feelings of the traumatic event are 'trapped' in the nervous system. Since the brain cannot process these emotions, the experience and/or its accompanying feelings are often suppressed from consciousness. The distress lives on in the nervous system where it causes disturbances in the emotional functioning of the person.

The EMDR technique does two very important things:

  1. It "unlocks" the negative memories and emotions stored in the nervous system from a trauma
  2. It helps the brain to successfully process the experience in order to help you to think differently about yourself in relation to the trauma.

EMDR puts you in control and helps you stay there!

What can you expect from an EMDR session?

A typical processing session lasts from 60—90 minutes.

We will talk with you and take a history in order to understand your difficulties and how they currently affect your life. Once you are happy to progress, we come up with:-

  • Your description of your problem that will include an image or picture that represents the past event
  • Your negative belief about yourself in relationship to the event
  • Emotions and physical sensations associated with the event
  • A positive belief in how you would prefer to think about yourself
  • You will also be asked to give ratings from 1- 10 on your degree of upset and the credibility of the positive beliefs, as a way of monitoring your progress during the session.

After all the above is established:-
1. You and I begin the processing phase of the procedure using the eye movements. During this time I will be sitting beside you and facing you. You will bring to mind the picture of the experience that is bothering you along with the negative self-statement, the emotions, and the physical sensations. You will be asked to hold this in mind as best you can while following with your eyes my fingers, which will be moving back and forth.

2. After a series of roughly 30—50 eye movements, I will ask you to stop, rest and let go of the image (or thought) for a second, take a deep breath, and then notice and describe briefly what thoughts, feelings, or images arise for you.

3. Usually, I will ask you to go on with those thoughts, feelings, or images and we continue to do another set of eye movements. You will go through the process of moving your eyes, Pausing, and reflecting several times during the session.

4. Typically, the images, emotions, and sensations you experience from an event change as you go through this process. You will begin to find that your thoughts, feelings, images, and physical sensations become less distressing.

5. I will then ask you to bring up the positive self-statement and we will use EMDR to help you begin to associate this new way of thinking about yourself with the original troubling image.

How many EMDR sessions will I need?

Even though EMDR can yield results in a short time, it is hard to predict, in general, how long EMDR treatment will take.

You may experience sufficient relief from your symptoms in as few as 1 to 6 sessions.

We also may use EMDR as part of a longer-term therapy process for several months to deal with various problems and issues.

Important EMDR Information:

There are many safety procedures built into the EMDR process, but it can still be an upsetting experience.

Each EMDR session is designed to help you feel less upset at the end of the session. But sometimes it’s hard to work through a difficult issue even in a 90-minute session.

You might remember events or parts of a trauma you either hadn’t thought about before or hadn’t associated with the problem being worked on. In EMDR negative memories usually bring up important psychological issues that can be processed.

If you decide that EMDR is for you, it’s important that once you start you need to be prepared to follow through with a full course of treatment.

Contact Aisling or Ray Now for an EMDR session appointment.

Contact Details

Call Us
01 2986507
Aisling Killoran
087 135 2122
Ray Manning
087 677 8049
Ballinteer Clinic
Ballinteer, D16

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