Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is a psychotherapy treatment that was originally designed to alleviate the distress associated with traumatic memories. The developer, Francine Shapiro, created the Adaptive Information Processing model which states that EMDR therapy facilitates the accessing and processing of traumatic memories and other adverse life experience to bring these to an adaptive resolution. After successful treatment with EMDR therapy, affective distress is relieved, negative beliefs are reformulated, and physiological arousal is reduced. This approach for treating PTSD has proven to be very effective.
As an EMDR therapist, I provide trauma therapy with EMDR for those who need relief. EMDR has been found to be effective in working with individuals with trauma. It is a tool that is used with single incident traumas (acute, one time events), such as accidents, assaults, and events outside the norm of daily events. EMDR is also effective in treating chronic traumas that keep us stuck in self-defeating patterns. Chronic traumas are often things we have gone through years ago and believe we have moved beyond them, yet they invade our present day and get in the way of our good intentions. For example, when we are being bossed around, yelled at, and talked down to in present day life, our responses are exaggerated because of the past that still haunt us. If you are looking for an EMDR therapist in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, you have found the one who can help you.
Somatic Experiencing (SE)
Somatic Experiencing is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application. Levine developed this approach to addressing the effects of trauma after observing prey animals, whose lives are routinely threatened in the wild, are able to recover readily by physically releasing the energy they accumulate during stressful events. Humans, on the other hand, often override these natural ways of regulating the nervous system with feelings of shame and pervasive thoughts, judgments, and fears. Somatic Experiencing aims to help people move past the place where they might be “stuck” in processing a traumatic event. This psychobiological trauma resolution is a potent method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress. The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental attachment trauma.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
Richard Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) as an approach to which identifies and addresses multiple sub-personalities or families within each person’s mental system. These sub-personalities consist of wounded parts and painful emotions such as anger and shame, and parts that try to control and protect the person from the pain of the wounded parts. The sub-personalities are often in conflict with each other and with one’s core Self, a concept that describes the confident, compassionate, whole person that is at the core of every individual. IFS focuses on healing the wounded parts and restoring mental balance and harmony by changing the dynamics that create discord among the sub-personalities and the Self.
Major Influences on my work with Trauma include: Francine Shapiro, Peter Levine, Daniel Seigal, Daniel Amen, Diane Poole-Heller, Bessel van der Kolk,Laurel Parnell, Richard Swartz, and many others. I am constantly refreshing my approaches as new information arrives in the field of trauma resolution.