Category Archives: EMDR

EMDR for Confidence: My Story

I have been and EMDR therapist for a few years now and one of the important things about being a therapist is doing my own therapy, getting on the other side of all my own roadblocks. When I went to my therapist one of the questions she asked me is, “What is one of the things you would like to feel differently about in your life?” This is a great therapy question and such a helpful measure for success. My response, “I want to feel confident.”

Confidence is something I’ve struggled with most of my life. It’s manifested in difficulty making decisions, feeling small inside, doubting my skills and cowering in relationships with people who have big personalities. But since doing my own EMDR therapy and rewiring some old thought patterns, my outlook on myself and my felt sense of self has greatly shifted. It didn’t happen overnight. It happened over several sessions and required going back to certain events in my life and re-wiring my brains experience of them. It required looking at my belief about myself in relation to those event and seeing it in a new light.

Things like childhood bullying, conflicts with parents, elementary school classroom trauma. All these things are still part of my story, the experiences still happened, but my felt sense of myself in relationship to them has changed. As a result of that shift I have changed. I’m more brave, I make decisions with more ease and don’t feel small anymore. I still have stuff to work on because I want to be a better human and brighter version of myself, but I can honestly say, due to my personal EMDR therapy certain integral parts of myself have shifted.

Remote EMDR Therapy , Video On-line therapy

How can EMDR help during shelter in place in the time of Covid-19

Many of us feel unsettled in this time. For some people the uncertainty of our current situation mirrors other times of uncertainty in their lives and feels extra triggering. While we can’t undo the past, we can create a new understanding of it and enhance our ability to stand firmly in the present. By working on the underlying insecurities, anxieties and old belief systems that drive us we can strengthen our response to current events. 

Many people think EMDR is a tool that you can only use for past trauma. But it’s also a tool we can also use to clear out present day trauma. One of the most important building blocks of EMDR therapy is teaching people how to resource themselves, how to calm their nervous system and how to build on strengths already in them. 

Over the course of therapy I have seen my clients shift from feeling “not good enough” or “unlovable” to confident, strong individuals. 

EMDR is way of doing therapy that helps clients link their limiting beliefs or physical sensations to experiences and through that process, unlink the events allowing them to live more fully in the present.