Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR has been extensively researched over the last 30 years and proven effective to help people recover from symptoms of PTSD, grief, depression, performance anxiety, panic attacks stress, pain, addictions, physical and sexual abuse.
EMDR is very different from talk therapy. You don’t even need to talk about whatever is distressing you because it’s your brain that does all the healing. The certified EMDR therapist is trained to harness your natural capacity to heal.
How? Your brain is wired to recover from traumatic memories and events. This natural capacity involves communication between the amygdala (the alarm bell that sounds when danger is afoot), the hippocampus (the storage area that remembers cues about safety and danger), and the prefrontal cortex (the ‘computer’ that makes decisions about how you think feel and act). This team meeting happens during REM sleep. But just like you might need stitches to heal, sometimes you need EMDR to heal.
Why? If you experience an overwhelming event, or persistent overwhelming events or if you lacked adequate help, then your REM sleep is affected and your brain will not have that team meeting. So your nervous system’s response (fight, fight, freeze, submit, collapse, fawn) may get stuck or ‘frozen in time’. Which means that all the wealth of information you’ve learned over the years doesn’t upgrade the trauma. That’s when you notice you’re responding to a situation in your present life because you’re brain is using old software from a trauma from years ago thinking it’s still in danger. Very frustrating…
EMDR helps with accessing these ‘frozen in time’ trauma cues (sights, sounds, sensations, thoughts, emotions) when you’re in the safety of a trained therapists office so that your brain can upgrade it’s software, enabling healing to resume.
EMDR 2.0 focuses on taxing your short term memory so that your brain’s trauma response doesn’t get in the way when EMDR is trying to upgrade it’s software (like dissociating when a trauma memory is activated). EMDR 2.0 is similar to traditional EMDR therapy but you are way more engaged when thinking of a trauma memory. You might be: standing and doing the grapevine while tapping up and down your arms while looking left to right following the therapists fingers while spelling or doing math.
Why? Your brain has been “white knuckling” the trauma so hard for so long that when you juggle the memory and many other things all at once, you’re brain will drop the memory. And when it goes back into long term memory, it’s stored differently. After EMDR, you have your memories but without the distress. Thank you neuroplasticity!
Has EDMR been of benefit to you?
Share your testimony of how Journey With Julie has helped your healing journey.
Trauma Centre Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY)
When you are overwhelmed by trauma, your body can disconnect from its internal sensations so it doesn’t have to feel the pain. Over time, you lose awareness or perception of sensations from within your body (interoception).
As Bessel van der Kolk described in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, yoga is a way to learn to inhabit your body after trauma.
TCTSY offers you opportunities to be in charge of yourself based on a felt sense of your own body. Using modified yoga forms, you are invited to move your body, you have the option to notice your body in those different forms, and you have the option to make a choice with what to do with your body.
TCTSY is helpful for when you feel disconnected or dissociated from your body most of the time. It is helpful for when you feel resistant to connect with yourself and with others. TCTSY can be helpful as a form of stabilize before reprocessing trauma with EMDR.
The focus is on your internal experience rather than the external experience and thus rebuilds your ‘interoception’. By focusing on the felt sense of your body to inform the choices you make with your body, TCTSY allows you to restore your connection of mind and body and cultivate a sense of agency that is often compromised as a result of trauma. As a result, you feel more positive and empowered in their body, mind, and life.
TCTSY is extensively researched and has foundations in Trauma Theory, Attachment Theory, and Neuroscience.
Has TCTSY been of benefit to you?
Share your testimony of how Journey With Julie has helped your healing journey.
“Trauma sensitive yoga helped me feel safe and comfortable in my own body. For the first time in my life, I was able to befriend and truly connect with my body as an integral part of myself rather than an enemy and painful place to be.”
— LouAnn
Try out EMDR and TCTSY
for FREE
Why wait to feel better?
Start now with these 3 guided audio therapeutic practices.
FAQs
-
Therapy is $160/hour CAD plus 5% GST
-
Clients can choose to pay via credit card or etransfer for their appointments.
-
I offer appointments Monday-Friday with options in the morning and afternoon.
-
I support clients who are struggling with complex trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, chronic pain, grief, conflict in relationships, stress, performance, infertility, addictions, and more.
-
In the intake session, I learn about you, we figure out your goals, and we create an understanding of how I can help you achieve them. I guide you through coping strategies so you can walk away feeling relieved, validated, hopeful, and equipped to deal with your struggles a little bit more than when you arrived.
Depending on how you are stuck and what your goals are, I might offer TCTSY, EMDR, or Coaching for you to choose or a combination of them in order to meet your goals.
-
In TCTSY, the focus is on you being in charge of your body, choosing if, when, or how to move your body based on what you notice (or not) from inside of your body rather than what it looks like from the outside and forcing your body to move in ways that are not available to you. The purpose of TCTSY is to cultivate a more positive relationship with your body.
TCTSY can be practiced sitting in your chair, standing, or lying on the carpet or a yoga matt. It might be practiced for 5-15 minutes or longer, depending on what you choose.
I offer TCTSY as a choice for clients who feel numb or dissociated from their body to connect with and notice themselves in order to proceed with EMDR Therapy to reprocess trauma.
Feel free to press the Free EMDR Resources button on the top right corner of my website. You’ll discover a free TCTSY Audio Practice in addition to free EMDR and Coaching Audio Practices. If you’re interested, you might try it out and see if it is available to you!