Jillian Wendelin, LMFT, Clinical Director here at LVT, sitting down to share with you all about EMDR! Lots of acronyms lol so let's get specific about what EMDR is! It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.
I have to tell you that when I first heard about it in school 13 years ago I thought it sounded like snake oil! I literally didn't give it a second thought until I was in my licensed internship and my supervisor who I really respected was trained in it. The seed was planted! Then one of my closest therapist friends got trained in it and it was OVER! I had to get trained.
Before getting trained in EMDR I felt like talk therapy was somewhat helping but I could tell that people were only getting "better enough." And I could also sense that I would eventually burn out on doing talk therapy if I continued to work this way.
So myself and 3 colleagues drove off to change our lives and we didn't even know it.
We learned that this therapy is incredibly powerful. At the training we practice the modality on each other, and each of us had a powerful experience with it while we were there.
I feel like I can hear you asking ok, so how does it work lady?!
Ok ok, first I will share that it is an 8 phase modality of treatment. It is a complete therapy not just "a thing you do."
I like to explain it to my clients with a metaphor-- the idea is that you are building the garden of your life... Imagine it! The cherry tree, the asparagus... I don't know, whatever you want in there! Avocados? Peaches? Whatever YOU enjoy you are picking specifically for this garden... but you keep having weeds come up! This won't work!
Well I think of regular talk therapy as teaching you how to trim the weeds, how to "cope" with the weeds... now that is helpful! There is a place for that for sure, but EMDR and other therapies like it seek to rip those suckers out by the ROOT!
We need to help your BODY, HEART and MIND let go of the hard, rotten, or painful things that have happened in your life so that those parts of you can move forward and stop remembering that old hurt.
SO much love to all the mommas struggling out there, we have treatments that can help and we want to help. Text or call if we can help