Learn about EMDR during Mental Health Awareness Month

Counseling can be a big step for most people, and it can feel a little nerve racking with the expectation that you’re supposed to tell your deepest hurts or darkest secrets to a total stranger. However, when our past becomes our present, then it’s time to deal with those hurts and secrets, so we don’t allow them to affect our relationships and day-to-day functioning. 

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is one technique that therapists can use to help clients process and resolve their concerns. For a therapist to use EMDR, they need to be specially trained in the technique. Catholic Charities has two fully licensed and trained EMDR therapists, Karen Campbell, LMHC and Mukhabbat Yusupova, LMHC. Additionally Tammy Gaff, graduate intern with expected completion of master's degree in August 2024, has begun her EMDR training in April 2024. EMDR, when done appropriately and ethically, empowers clients while helping them untwist thinking and feel better in a way that sustains. 

Your brain is a complex organ and its ability to learn and adapt, is what can help you survive a traumatic event, frightening experiences, persistent mental health symptoms, and even our everyday life events. But when those events are also emotionally charged in a way that can prevent additional adaptations, then people feel stuck in a state of mind that is not helpful. Have you ever noticed that it’s easier to remember the negative experiences, and we may have to make efforts or be reminded of the positive ones? That’s because our brain is hard wired for survival and the events that teach us how to survive will be the strongest, however it can also keep us stuck in that mode or revisiting those events and thoughts in our brains. 

If you notice that unhelpful thoughts of the past pop up at random times, you’re overreacting to situations that aren’t threatening, you second-guess yourself, or feel like everyone/everything is against you, then it may be time to talk with someone and consider an EMDR trained therapist to not just talk through the events, but help your brain reprocess and regain its ability to learn and adapt again. You are stronger than you may know and we want to help you believe those inner strengths and be the person God has made you to be. 

To learn more about EMDR you can visit https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/.  

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