Our Services

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This form of trauma therapy is based on the Adaptive Information Processing model. This model theorizes that when distressing or traumatic things happen to you without your brain processing them in the way it was naturally meant to, you are left with unhealthy beliefs, images, emotions, and even physical sensations. When these original beliefs, images, emotions, and sensations are triggered by a new (or ongoing) situation, they come back in full force because they were never resolved in the first place. Your brain and body are designed to heal on their own but sometimes circumstances get in the way. With the use of EMDR, we can access those past distressing or traumatic events so the brain and body can begin processing them, relieving the individual of those residual symptoms. Through EMDR, the person can begin to let go of unneeded baggage (thoughts, beliefs, emotions, etc) related to the past which allows for new helpful information to be recognized. At the completion of EMDR, clients often report feeling free of old beliefs that were holding them back, feeling less emotional about the past, and having more empowered beliefs about themselves. EMDR is a well-researched, powerful form of trauma therapy that we frequently use with our clients. We find that we can process those adverse life events without having to talk about it in great detail and without the client having to complete homework outside of sessions.

Brainspotting is a powerful trauma treatment modality that uses the brain and body’s natural healing abilities. Like EMDR, Brainspotting works off the belief that traumatic events get stored maladaptively by the brain, leading to distressing symptoms and behaviors in the present. When the maladaptive material is accessed and processed through, it alleviates the current concerns. In Brainspotting, the therapist and client work together to find “brainspots”. Brainspots are essentially eye positions that are connected to an emotionally or energetically activated issue within the brain. The brainspot represents where traumatic or difficult issues are held within the brain. Finding the brainspot “opens the door” to where and how the material is stored in the body, allowing people to use their “felt sense” to integrate and process through traumas. It is believed that Brainspotting works from “the bottom up”, accessing the autonomic and limbic systems within the body’s central nervous system. This allows the body and brain to work through things on a deeper level than regular “talk therapy”. Through the identification of and mindful focusing on brainspots, we can bypass the conscious, thinking mind and access the deeper, subcortical (subconscious) parts of the brain.

Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) attempts to access and process traumatic experiences by working through the original physiological responses that occurred when the deep brain (the brain stem) had been alerted to a threat or an attachment disruption. Originally developed to process through attachment shock that one's nervous system experienced (ie, abandonment in infancy), it is also helpful in processing through other unresolved traumatic experiences as well. We know that often the original experience was so disturbing that it became covered in layers of thoughts and feelings and distressing re-experiencing. It may also have been compounded by relational problems which themselves were precipitated by the continuing distress. This transformational approach relies on the belief that the human brain has an inherent ability to find healing from emotional trauma when the memory of the initiating event is approached in a specific way. DBR is considered a body-based, or “bottom-up” treatment. These approaches do not rely on the restructuring of thoughts or meanings at a complex verbal level for “top-down” control of symptoms, nor do they rely on exposure for establishing cortical control of fear responses.

Structural dissociation theory suggests that trauma causes the physical split between the two brain hemispheres to also become a psychological divide. The left hemisphere, responsible for day-to-day functioning, enables people to continue in their daily routines. For instance, a child is able to attend school the day after an abusive episode. The right hemisphere, which lacks verbal capabilities, holds implicit nonverbal memories of the trauma, and anticipates subsequent traumatic events. This usually happens as a result of chronic misattuments and traumatic events. An understanding of the manifestations of structural dissociation helps the therapist make sense of paradoxical and contradictory symptoms and helps the client to interpret their emotions, behavior, and physical reactions as information about the effects of trauma rather than proof of their defectiveness. Using this theory, we work towards increased internal commuincation, compassion, and cooperation to decrease dissociative symptoms and improve every-day functioning.