EMDR therapy is one of the most popular types of therapy used today for the treatment of trauma. But what is EMDR therapy, and how does it work? Will it help you heal from your past trauma and start a new life in addiction recovery? Santé Center for Healing is here to help you heal with our treatment programs.
When starting to explore EMDR therapy, it helps to understand a little bit about trauma. If you need addiction treatment, you likely suffered some trauma in your past. When you seek help for your addiction at a substance abuse treatment center, you also learn more about EMDR therapy in Texas. Contact us at 866.238.3154 for more information.
What Is Trauma?
To understand EMDR therapy, you must first understand trauma. Trauma is a psychological and emotional response to deeply troubling events or experiences. You can suffer the effects of trauma after an accident, injury, illness, loved one’s death, or divorce. Or you can experience trauma from crime-related events like assault, rape, abuse, or torture.
How these events affect an individual varies from person to person. The trauma therapy treatment at Santé Center for Healing treats the symptoms you suffer from your trauma. These symptoms include anger, ongoing sadness, flashbacks, mood swings, nausea, and headaches. Shame, isolation, hopelessness, and guilt also follow trauma, even when the events are not the individual’s fault.
The Connection Between Trauma and EMDR Therapy
EMDR therapy is an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a type of trauma therapy that helps the brain reprocess information from traumatic events so that you can heal emotionally. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, which involves eye movements, tapping, or auditory stimulation. This bilateral stimulation disrupts the pattern of unprocessed trauma in your brain so you can start to heal.
When the brain processes information from a traumatic event, it gets “stuck” on that event. The trauma feels like it is happening in the present, even though it happened in the past. This is called PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. EMDR therapy can help you heal the symptoms of PTSD so that you can live a happy, healthy life in recovery.
How Does EMDR Therapy Work?
To learn more about EMDR therapy, let’s break this question into two parts.
EMDR therapy: What Is It?
EMDR therapy is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy. It is an interactive type of talk therapy that helps you relieve your symptoms of psychological stress. If you suffer from trauma and need post-traumatic stress disorder treatment (PTSD treatment), EMDR enables you to start healing from your difficult past events.
How does EMDR therapy work?
EMDR involves specific phases of recovery from the trauma. These phases include history and treatment planning, preparation, assessment, treatment, and evaluation. Your therapist guides you through these phases in about 12 to 20 treatment sessions.
Over time, you stop feeling the trauma and gain the ability to discuss the events without suffering your symptoms. At the same time, your highly detailed memories of these events start to fade. You can discuss them without feeling the emotional intensity you did in the past.
EMDR therapy is an excellent treatment for trauma because it gets to the root of the problem. It helps you work through your trauma to live a happy, healthy life in recovery.
The Outcome of EMDR Therapy
In terms of the expected outcome, what is EMDR therapy proven to provide? Many studies indicate that it’s the most effective treatment for PTSD. The Department of Veterans Affairs uses EMDR for military members suffering from PTSD after exposure to combat environments.
One study showed that most people with PTSD and psychotic disorders saw significant improvement after their EMDR therapy. They experienced fewer hallucinations, bouts of anxiety, delusions, and depression symptoms. Studies also show that the positive effects of EMDR last for the long term, with one reporting that a majority percent of treated people enjoyed complete remission from their symptoms.
Find Effective EMDR Therapy at Santé Center for Healing
You can receive your own EMDR therapy as part of your addiction treatment program in Texas. Because addiction, mental illness, and trauma often go hand-in-hand, getting this help in rehab makes perfect sense. Simply find a quality dual diagnosis treatment program offering EMDR to start healing from your own trauma and the substance abuse you engaged in as self-medication.
Other programs and services you need with EMDR for addiction include:
- Medical detox services
- Residential treatment program
- Intensive outpatient program (IOP)
- Transitional living programs
- Professionals program
- Individual counseling
- Group therapy program
- Family therapy program
- Psychotherapy treatment
Santé Center for Healing in Argyle, Texas, provides the therapies and treatments you need to end your substance abuse and the root problems that led you into addiction. Call Santé Center for Healing at 866.238.3154 to learn more about our available programs, or fill out our online form and let us get back to you.
