Why is Heather an EMDR Therapist?

(Written by Heather Post, the newest addition to our team! Photo by Miguel Mateo)

I remember hearing about EMDR in graduate school, and, always the skeptic, immediately dismissed it. After all, everything that makes therapy what it is - talking, sharing, learning skills, building a therapeutic relationship, time, mutual investment and trust - couldn't possibly be replaced by doing eye movements, could it?

Over the course of finding my stride as a therapist and working in various community mental health settings, I found that a lot of the conventional wisdom and evidence-based practices that seemed to be the gold standard somehow didn't fit with my value system. What I mean by that is - I found when working with survivors of trauma, (whether that be intergenerational trauma, racialized trauma, interpersonal trauma or any other type of trauma) that some of what was considered best-practices felt dismissive to me. Don't get me wrong, I certainly believe there is a time and place for challenging thoughts and thinking, but what trauma survivors are experiencing isn't irrational, it is survival.

At the end of the day. to be trauma-informed means that all therapists are trauma therapists, and that we honor and acknowledge that an individual's response to trauma is their body doing it's best job at protecting them. Having studied various aspects of trauma, such as the polyvagal theory (the way the nervous system is wired to activate post-trauma) and how traumatic memories are often stored as sensory experiences, this initial skeptic became a cautious optimist and decided to learn EMDR. I was immediately enchanted by EMDR.

I love that EMDR incorporates thoughts, feelings, memories and somatic experiences and can process them all together. I love that there is no one right way to experience EMDR as a client. I love that it works, even though we don't know how. I love it's origin story. I love that even though we only think we know how it works, it continues to shine in clinical trial after clinical trial. I love that we are learning new protocols, applications and uses for EMDR all that time, and how it is a trauma therapy that is not just a trauma therapy. I love that EMDR honors a client's privacy, and that they can process even if there is something that is too painful to even talk about, and it not only improves trauma symptoms, but improves the quality of therapy altogether. And while EMDR is not a miracle, it definitely is a little bit of a mystery, and that just might be what I love most of all.