Heal your trauma with a powerful therapy technique that blends psychology, neurophysiology, and innate intelligence
EMDR is Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy, developed for trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It has a strong clinical track record for alleviating most of the symptoms associated with trauma—anxiety, fear, terror, flashbacks, sleep problems and more.
Trauma is big Trauma and little “t” Trauma
EMDR helps with big Trauma and little “t” trauma. Trauma with a big “T” is overwhelming and debilitating, like abuse, abandonment, combat trauma, etc. Trauma with a little “t”, the small, but disruptive little traumas of childhood, or later periods of life, like humiliation at the hands of mean teachers, shaming experiences, social exclusion by peers, etc.
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For more complete emotional healing we use EMDR to get your brain unstuck and able to move out of the past into your present life
EMDR is an ingenious technique that uses bi-lateral stimulation (usually eye movements) to activate an innate healing process for resolving trauma. In trauma and other disruptive memories, the overwhelming experience is locked away in its own neural network.
That’s the definition of trauma: it’s an experience that is so overwhelming in the moment that it cannot be processed.
What EMDR does is help the rest of the brain, with its innate healing resources, connect with the traumatic memory network and “process”, “integrate”, and “resolve” the troubling memory.
When we sleep our brain takes the day residue and dreams with it.
In dreaming, which involves bi-lateral eye movements, we process, integrate, and resolve the day’s experiences. We learn what we need to learn, retaining it in integrated neural networks, and we let go of what we do not need.
EMDR activates a similar type of brain processing that enables us to put the traumatic memories behind us, only keeping what knowledge, wisdom, and self-empowerment we need.
This processing happens at deep brain levels, and we do not need to know all the inner workings while it is happening. We simply check in after each set of bi-lateral stimulation set and make sure the process is moving along. And we help you integrate at the end of each session.
With EMDR, with a little nudge, your brain’s own innate healing abilities get activated and operational
How does EMDR therapy work?
We can do it in conjunction with other techniques or on its own. For a typical course of EMDR, we decide how to structure the treatment. We identify what the issues are that are being triggered in the person’s daily life and what the disturbing or traumatic memories are that are the source of the current triggering.
We rank them in chronological and distress-level order and then we process them systematically. We start the processing with
- a brief description of the memory (Headlines only, so as not to re-traumatize the person)
- a check-in about what negative belief is associated with the memory,
- a check-in about which emotions are involved
- a check-in about what body sensations the person has as they think of the memory.
Then, we begin the processing:
The client follows the therapist’s fingers with their eyes, back and forth across the midline. (If this is uncomfortable, then we can use touch, a pulsing hand held device, or audio stimuli.)
Over the course of a number of sets of bi-lateral stimulation, the memory and the person’s experience of the memory shifts in dramatic and powerful ways, in an almost miraculously unpredictable manner, leaving the person feeling very different—usually calm, at peace, and much more empowered.
Read my favorite EMDR success stories below
A personal EMDR success:
I had disproportionate anxiety when I looked at weather reports on my apps. I knew that the media hypes up weather reports to create fear to encourage us to look more frequently to drive revenue but I suspected something else was going on.
Perhaps my excessive anxiety might relate to three scary “weather” experiences I had in recent years. In one, I had to evacuate a little country cottage due to flooding in the Catskills (Hurricane Irene.) In the second, a huge tree fell down next to my home (Super Storm Sandy.) And in the third, I was trapped in my car in a freak snow storm for five hours (in a commute that usually takes 30 minutes.)
I had calmed some of my anxiety using a number of modalities but EMDR completed the processing. When my EMDR therapist asked what the worst memory was (the first one) and what the worst part of it was (the thunderous sound of the water, that I knew could annihilate me in an instant), I was surprised that I had not realized the sound scared me so much!
When we processed it, I had an experience that can sometimes happen with EMDR: The memory of the experience receded, spatially moving away from me, and at the end I no longer had the physiological anxiety response when I looked at weather reports. As is common with EMDR, the relief generalized to the other two “traumatic” weather memories and we when processed them in the next session, the distress level started at a lower level and processed more quickly.
Melanie’s EMDR Success Story
Melanie had a difficult co-worker who not only annoyed her, but triggered a whole enervated mood change. Just the briefest interaction with this co-worker could disrupt Melanie’s whole day.
We spend a number of therapy sessions on this, came to understand why she found this person so upsetting, and developed several cognitive and energetic strategies to help. But when Melanie’s level of distress did not shift enough, we did EMDR.
In the EMDR processing, through her spontaneous recall of repressed childhood memories, we discovered several related issues that we had not known about. Processing of these memories enabled Melanie to completely shift her reactivity to her co-worker, who no longer has the ability to trigger her.
A More Complete Therapy
Embrace your true self and use that connection to accelerate your emotional healing and personal growth.
Mind
Explore your thoughts, story, personal history, and “issues.” What do you want help with, what you want to change, and what you want to create?
Body
By bringing awareness to the emotional issues stored in our physical body, we can shift stuck energies, enliven your life force, and inspire personal growth.
Spirit
By integrating therapy with YOUR spiritual beliefs, ideas of what’s possible, and concepts of how “life works,” you can have a fuller personal growth experience.
FAQs
- Talk Therapy
- Body Therapy
- Spiritual Aspects–exploring and integrating
- Extraordinary EMDR Blends
- Energy Healing Modalities
- Soul Level Tools
- Extraordinary Technology
Yes I do offer Traditional Therapy. This is Talk Therapy and usually is for people who are new to therapy or only want to work on a specific issue for a shorter period of time, but I am open to exploring what your interests and needs are.
Yes, I do Telehealth!
Over years of initial research, Telehealth has been shown to be highly effective. During the times of mandated stay-at-home, it is the safest way to do therapy! I do Telehealth by phone, FaceTime, Zoom, and a therapy video service called Doxyme.
Not all of A Complete Therapy can be done via Telehealth but a good portion of it can.
We can do: Talk Therapy, Energy Healing, Spirituality, Soul level techniques, and Evolutionary Energetics. We can do components of Body Therapy and EMDR, remotely.
During the pandemic, we cannot do Neurofeedback in my office, but you could buy a Personal Home Neurofeedback system (and I can guide you through using it and help you incorporate its effects into your personal growth process.)
A More Complete Therapy is a private pay therapy — the fee is $250 per 60-minute session.
Most Complete Therapy sessions include Talk Therapy, Body Therapy, Energy Healing, NeurOptimal Neurofeedback, and Soul Plan Reading.
- EMDR sessions are often 90 minutes long ($300) but can also be done in 60-minute sessions ($250.)
- The fee for Soul Realignment readings by themselves is $600 but when done as part of a Complete Therapy Experience it is $250 (for the reading, clearing, and paper work) in addition to the $250 reporting session (90 minutes.) [During the times of the pandemic crisis, reduced rates are available.]
It is possible to come for my separate modalities, and not therapy:
- If you come for just EMDR and not Complete Therapy, the fee is $250 for the 60 minute session and $300 for the 90 minute session.
- If you come for Neurofeedback (and not therapy) the fee $200 per session or $150 per session when you buy a package of 10.
- A Soul Plan Reading by itself (without therapy) is $400 and is a 90 minute reading.
- A Soul Realignment Reading by itself (without therapy) is $600, and involves the practitioner doing the clearing separately from the feedback/reporting session (which takes 90 minutes.)
Yes.
I accept insurance for traditional Talk Therapy sessions. (They can include some meditation, breathing, relaxation techniques as they are also covered by insurance.) These sessions are 45 minutes. I am on most major insurance panels, including Aetna, Cigna, Emblem, United Health Care, Medicare, etc.