Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy on the rise. Promoted by celebrities such as Prince Harry and Lady Gaga, and used within the US Department of Veterans Affairs, today EMDR is one of the top therapies for healing trauma.

But what is the difference between trauma and PTSD anyways? And do you need to have trauma to benefit from EMDR therapy?

We'll Cover:

• What is trauma therapy?

• What counts as a traumatic experience?

• The differences between trauma and PTSD

• How do you know if you have experienced trauma?

• Can EMDR help me?

Trauma Therapy

Trauma-focused therapies are becoming very popular. Because we're learning so much about how trauma impacts the brain, we now understand how trauma therapy can help other mental health issues.

This is because trauma therapy gets at the root cause of our mental health struggles.

Traumatic experiences can contribute to a wide variety of mental health issues. This includes:

• substance use

• eating disorders

• depression

• anxiety and panic disorders

  
  

If a traumatic experience is not properly processed by the brain, then we remain in a fight/flight or frozen state. Over time, these states can contribute to other mental health issues.

How Traumatic Experiences Work

Trauma has everything to do with how your brain processes memories.

For example, lets say it's a normal day... until you grab your mug and discover there's a big spider in your coffee!

An appropriate response would be panic. However when you sleep that night, your brain will process the disturbing memory so that you aren't wired to be constantly afraid of spiders. Sure, the next day you might be a little cautious when drinking your coffee. But over time this fades and the memory will be stored away safely.

An experience is traumatic when our brain does not process the memory correctly, when the memory gets stored with a live wire wrapped around it. The disturbing memory can be triggered by certain people, places, smells, feelings, etc.

This can range from near-death experiences such as a car crash or immigrating to another country, to things like bullying or emotional neglect.

Regardless of the specific source, trauma is mostly defined by a response that interferes with our brain's ability to process the memory completely (like with the spider memory)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing was founded in the late 80s, and is one of the most popular approaches for overcoming trauma.

It is client-centered, and allows your brain to rewrite how it has stored it's memories so that you can overcome the disturbance.

But with all this talk about trauma, you may be wondering if you actually have it? And where does PTSD fit into all of this?

Trauma and PTSD

Websters defines trauma as:

a disordered state resulting from severe mental or emotional stress or physical injury. 

PTSD is one specific clinical diagnosis for trauma.

And though it’s one of the most severe diagnoses, it’s not the most common. PTSD involves many symptoms that impact your ability to function, such as recurrent nightmares, anger outbursts, and intense distress in response to trauma cues.

More commonly a traumatic event leads to later issues such as ADHD, addiction, depression, or anxiety.

Even outside of mental health disorders, traumatic experiences can contribute to "typical issues" like overworking, high-stress, or codependent relationships. 

We can experience these issues and not realize that they are resulting from a traumatic experience. Actually this is quite common, and it’s the job of the therapist to help identify any traumatic roots that may be contributing to our current struggles.

Trauma is More Common Than You Think

The “disordered state” of trauma often comes from a moment of shock, when we’re unprepared to handle something for the first time.

Examples of this could be sexual abuse, or a car accident, although these incidents are less common. But the general population does tend to share a specific type of trauma, and those come from our childhood attachment experience.

Think about how many firsts we experience as children living in an adult world. First time letting somebody down, or the first time scraping our knee. And in some of these first time events, we experience shocks that we were unprepared for.

Events that seem mundane to adults can totally disrupt a child's world, such as wetting the bed, or teasing from peers.

When a moment of profound shock occurs and the right support isn't available, children can walk away from these experiences with distorted takeaways about their self worth.

Negative Self-Beliefs

When we experience shocks that we were unprepared for, a lesson is formed.

If we have proper support from others in these situations, then we can have a healthy lesson.

But when that's not the case, we walk away with an internalized bias such as “I’m not good enough” or “I don’t deserve love.”

Now this may not be literally how we think about ourselves, but functions more as a default setting that guides what we do and don't do, who we seek out, how much risk we take, etc.

Simply put, if you have a prevalent negative self belief, there is an origin point for that belief. It didn’t just come out of the blue and you weren’t born with it, so it was learned through experience.

With EMDR, we can locate those early experiences and process them so that your adult brain can develop a more rational conclusion.

Should I do EMDR?

Here are some signs that EMDR may be useful:

• If you have diagnosed PTSD

• If you have negative self-beliefs that have impacted your ability to healthily function

• If you have memories that feel disturbing

• If you feel "stuck" in normal talk therapy, and that something deeper needs to happen

Want help finding an EMDR therapist? Find an EMDR therapist today.

Learn More About EMDR