Why is Angelica an EMDR therapist?
One of the most common things that I hear from clients is that they feel “stuck”, usually to convey that their lives are being limited by a painful belief, emotion, or behavior pattern. Throughout the course of our lives, our experiences and interactions with others have the ability to shape our brains and we develop several “networks” in our brains that inform how we think, feel, and behave. This brilliant process aids our survival most of the time, but all systems can become maladaptive and certain experiences can cause our system to lock up, so, we literally become stuck. The result of this is often that our stress response becomes hijacked and our ability to choose how we relate to ourselves, others, and the world can feel out of our control.
Developing awareness around these ways of being is certainly the first step to shifting our experience and talk therapy can be effective for this. However, traumatic experiences are stored in the body and it is important that all of our experiences be integrated on a physical level, otherwise, there is risk of developing dis-ease in the body in the form of chronic illness, pain, or persistent fight or flight reactions. EMDR offers a mind-body approach that gets to the root of the issue by processing and releasing deeply ingrained physical, mental, and emotional patterns connected to past experiences that could go back as far as childhood. It could also be one stressful event or a series of what might be considered minor stressors that is enough to overwhelm our nervous system and our ability to cope. EMDR allows any stuck experiences to move through the nervous system and be integrated in whatever way is most adaptive for each individual.
EMDR also offers the advantage of being easily adaptable to work alongside other therapeutic modalities and I have seen it work as an excellent complement to somatic therapy, ego state therapy, and energy work. EMDR on its own incorporates several healing interventions such as mindfulness, guided visualisation, somatic awareness, and distress tolerance, making it a potent treatment that can lead to deep level transformation. When I am facilitating an EMDR session, I consider it to be a sacred, intuitive process, as each individual can experience healing through tapping into their own insight and resilience. EMDR is an expedited healing process that provides an opportunity to strengthen the parts of our self that hold the truth of who we are which can get buried beneath old patterns that no longer serve us.
I would love to discuss EMDR further with you if you’re curious to learn more about how it works or how it may meet your needs.
