EMDR trauma therapy

What EMDR is

EMDR — eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing — is a structured, evidence-based therapy for trauma. Using bilateral stimulation while you hold a memory in mind, the distress attached to it reduces and the belief you took from it ("I'm not safe", "it was my fault") can shift. You don't have to describe every detail out loud.

I'm certified in EMDR with EMDR Europe (training with Dr Derek Farrell and Gus Murray) and have used it successfully with my clients over the past ten years, integrated with other talk therapy approaches.

Big-T and small-t trauma

Trauma is not only the dramatic, life-threatening events — what therapists often call capital-T Trauma. It is also the repeated, quieter experiences that overwhelmed your capacity to cope at the time: emotional neglect, bullying, a difficult childhood, a sudden loss, a humiliation, an unsafe attachment, a medical trauma. These are sometimes called lowercase-t trauma. The nervous system does not always distinguish between the two; both can leave it stuck in survival mode, and both can be processed effectively with EMDR.

Blind to Therapist

EMDR has a valuable facility known as "Blind to Therapist". We can work with a trauma that may be too difficult for you to verbalise — without me, the therapist, even knowing what the specific memory is — while still working safely and effectively.

Recommended by leading health bodies

The World Health Organization lists it as a recommended psychological intervention for post-traumatic stress disorder in its mhGAP guidelines and its 2013 Guidelines for the Management of Conditions Specifically Related to Stress. The WHO and UNHCR — the UN Refugee Agency — also co-published the mhGAP Humanitarian Intervention Guide, which includes EMDR for adults and children affected by trauma and humanitarian emergencies. That's why it's used in disaster and conflict settings as well as in ordinary therapy rooms like this one.

Who it helps

Single-incident trauma such as an accident, assault or sudden loss; work-related and critical-incident trauma; childhood trauma and sexual abuse in childhood; and complex trauma where difficult experiences accumulated over years. It also helps where anxiety, panic or nightmares trace back to a specific event.

How we begin

From the first session I get straight to work on helping to lower your distress. We build practical tools and stabilisation as we go, then process the painful events and memories, always with reference to how the time between sessions has been for you.

Sessions are one hour in Midleton, or online where suitable. Trauma work in particular often benefits from meeting in person at the start.