Clear Life Counseling, LLC

Clear Life Counseling, LLC​​

​EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is an accelerated psychotherapy approach, developed by Francine Shapiro in 1987 to deal with the effects of trauma.  EMDR has since evolved into an effective intervention for other conditions as well, such as anxiety, panic disorders, phobias, depression, guilt, anger, and grief.

It can be used to help clients process through a single-event trauma (i.e., car accident, natural disaster, sudden loss), or it can be employed to address the accumulative effects of other traumatic experiences.  

When a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm normal coping mechanisms. The memory and associated stimuli are inadequately processed and stored in an isolated memory network in the right-hemisphere of the brain, without access to the adaptive resources of the left-brain hemisphere. EMDR appears to unlock the painful memory networks and allows a connection to be made between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, similar to the processing that naturally occur at night during REM sleep.

In an EMDR processing session, one or more types of bilateral stimulation (eye movement, alternating auditory tones or tapping) are incorporated to engage the processing between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. This approach has been found effective in reducing the intensity and negative charge associated with past events, and does not change the ability to remember the event, but rather the individual may recall the experience from a new, less disturbing perspective.

​​​​Click here to access the EMDR International Association Website for additional information on EMDR.​