“I just can’t stop thinking about what happened.” Many times when people experience a traumatic event, they continue to rehearse the event in their head for months after it occurred. They may have flashbacks or nightmares where they are relieving the event. Some people become more anxious or irritable than they were before the event. If you or your child are experiencing these symptoms, you may be suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD can be caused by a wide variety of events such as a car accident, abuse, bullying, fire, medical incidents, etc. However, everyone reacts differently to trauma, so even if two people experience the same event they may have different symptoms.

In order to reduce the symptoms of trauma, I use a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). When we experience a traumatic event, the left side of our brain, which is the logical and rational side, shuts down and becomes cut off from the right side of our brain. The right side of our brain, which holds our emotions, feelings and body sensations (i.e. headache, backache, stomachache, etc.) becomes overly stimulated and holds onto the sensations that we experienced during the trauma. For this reason, you may start to feel physically sick when you think of a traumatic event, because the memory affects us physically and emotionally.  EMDR simultaneously stimulates the left and right sides of the brain by using bilateral stimulation techniques (i.e. eye movements, tapping, drumming, etc.) so the left side of the brain can help rationalize and process the event for the right side of the brain. The result can be a dramatic decrease in flashbacks, nightmares, irritability, anxiety, hyper vigilance, etc. If you are interested in learning more about the science behind EMDR or some of the results of this technique, please see the articles and video below.

What is EMDR?

http://www.emdr.com/what-is-emdr

What is the actual EMDR session like?

https://emdria.site-ym.com/general/custom.asp?page=120

How EMDR works: A Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKrfH43srg8

Complex trauma often occurs when a person close to the child, such as a caregiver, engages in physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse over a prolonged period of time. While the child is experiencing the abuse, one of the ways the brain naturally learns to cope is to dissociate.  The child may mentally “tune out” what is going on around them so that they do not remember the details of the traumatic event. When this person becomes an adult, they may find that they still have difficulty focusing, cannot remember significant portions of their childhood and have unexplained body sensations that have no medical diagnosis.  Some people develop Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which means their identity becomes fragmented. A person with DID may feel like they have different parts of themselves (i.e. angry, depressed, needy, withdrawn, etc) that “take over” the body intermittently. Before treatment, I assess all complex trauma survivors for DID with the Multidimensional Inventory of Dissociation. If they do have DID, I utilize a specialized form of EMDR, taught by the Trauma Institute of Virginia http://traumainstituteofvirginia.org to lessen their symptoms. If you have questions or would like to schedule an assessment, please email Ashlee Reed at helpingyoufeellighter@gmail.com.