What EMDR helps with
EMDR for trauma and PTSD
EMDR is one of the most studied treatments for post-traumatic stress, recommended by the World Health Organization, the VA and the American Psychological Association. Intensives offer it in a concentrated format that may help the work move faster.
What trauma does to memory
A traumatic experience is stored differently from an ordinary one. Instead of being filed as something that happened and ended, it stays live: the images, body sensations and beliefs from the moment return as if it were still happening. Flashbacks, nightmares, startle, numbness, avoidance and the sense that you are permanently damaged all come from that unfinished storage.
This is true whether the trauma was one event (an assault, an accident, a sudden death) or years of smaller ones (an unsafe childhood, a controlling relationship, a job where you saw things no one should see).
How EMDR intensives treat it
EMDR's eight phases take a traumatic memory from its most disturbing image through to a settled state where it can be recalled without the body reacting. Bilateral stimulation, usually eye movements or tapping, is paired with the memory in sets until the disturbance drops and a truer belief ('it is over', 'I did what I could') takes hold.
Intensives suit trauma work especially well because they avoid the hardest part of weekly treatment: opening a memory on Tuesday and living with it half-processed until the following Tuesday. In a Focus or Depth intensive, we aim to stay with a memory until it settles.
Single-event and complex trauma
A single event usually fits a Focus Intensive. Complex trauma from childhood or long relationships needs the Depth format, with more preparation and a treatment map that sets the order of targets.
You do not have to tell me every detail to do EMDR. The processing works on the memory as you hold it, not on a spoken narrative.
Questions
Can EMDR be done online for trauma?
Will I have to talk about what happened in detail?
What if I dissociate?
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