Violence is all around us from bullying to mass shootings to ongoing violence against women and children. Violence causes physical and emotional harm to individuals and families called trauma. Trauma may interrupt and prevent an individual’s healthy growth and development. The more traumas an individual experiences the less resilient they are and they become more prone to developing low self-esteem and mental health concerns such as anxiety or depression and even Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or symptoms of PTSD.

When a disturbing event occurs, our brain automatically goes into survival mode, shuts down and often causes an individual to freeze internally and externally. Our brain records the details of a trauma with the original sounds, sights, smells, body sensations and negative feelings and thoughts. A trauma frozen in one’s memory will continually attempt to unlock itself which often leads to distressing symptoms such as nightmares, flashbacks and triggers to the past memory.

Some individuals handle a traumatic event because they have protective factors in place such as healthy coping and self-care strategies, a good support system and relative financial stability. This allows the brain to naturally unfreeze itself and move the negative event to an adaptive state within the brain.

At the Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan, our work with survivors of trauma is to help an individual learn and utilize healthy coping and self-care techniques, establish a healthy support system and provide links to community resources. Once these have been established an individual is often ready to begin working on a trauma incident.

One way to do this is through EMDR therapy, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), developed by Francine Shapiro. EMDR therapy targets the negative memory, thoughts, feelings and body sensations associated with the trauma; it reprocesses the trauma incident into the adaptive coping skill area of the brain. When this occurs, the trauma incident loses its negative disturbance level and the individual can move on from the experience and utilize their healthy coping skills.

During the reprocessing stage the client focuses on the memory, negative beliefs and associated feelings and body sensations while engaging in sets of rapid eye movements or by holding physical ‘tappers’. The tappers provide vibrations that stimulate reprocessing in the brain. Once the memory becomes unfrozen it can move to the area of the brain where higher level thinking occurs. When this happens, the client experiences new insights into the event, their disturbance level related to the incident discontinues and a new, positive belief about how they view themselves with regard to the situation is established. For example, a sexual assault survivor that has the negative belief they did something wrong, will instead internalize ‘I survived, I am strong’. The sexual assault survivor who may have had symptoms of anxiety, depression or post traumatic stress because of the assault will, most likely, lose those symptoms and begin the road to emotional health.

EMDR is a researched, evidence-based therapy proven to help individuals with PTSD or its symptoms. It has shown positive results for individuals with anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, chronic pain, grief/loss, addictions, performance anxiety and eating disorders. Those seeking EMDR therapy should look for a provider that has completed the minimum of both sections of the EMDR basic training approved by the EMDR International Association, is experienced in the eight phases of this therapy and receives updated training specific to this therapy. Information may be found at emdr.com, emdrhap.org, emdria.org or by emailing [email protected] or calling the Women’s Resource Center of Northern Michigan at (231) 347-0067.