Do We Have To Live With The Traces Of The Past?
EMDR Therapy
EMDR, in Turkish, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, is a physiologically based psychotherapy. He says that the reasons that bring people to therapy are actually results, and the source is the past experiences of the person that put him under stress. In other words, experiences that put the person under intense stress emerge as a problem today. Each of us at some point in our lives experiences traumatic events that put us under intense stress. Maybe a loss, maybe a separation, maybe a test, maybe the neglect of our parents… Sometimes we can cover up the events we experience, sometimes it makes itself felt; It comes to our minds during the day, comes alive in our eyes, enters our dreams. Even if we cover it up and ignore it, even if we continue to experience that event in our minds, the result will be the same; These traumatic events affect our present. So how does an event we experience at the age of 5 determine our behavior at the age of 30? Our brain consists of two hemispheres – the right and left hemispheres – and are connected to each other by nerve networks called the corpus callosum. There are certain tasks for which the right and left hemispheres are specifically responsible, one of which is that the right hemisphere is responsible for emotions and the left hemisphere for logic. Under normal conditions, the events we experience during the day are processed between the right and left hemispheres during REM sleep during the night when we dream. We can say as follows; The brain heals itself. Events are coded as the past in our brain and we have a logical explanation for the events and emotions we experience; It’s over now… But this does not apply to traumatic events. When experiencing a traumatic event, the brain is only programmed to survive, so it cannot make sense of events; The brain cannot heal itself. In this process, the person forms negative beliefs about himself and life. The event maintains its place with the same vitality as it was experienced, even after many years, we feel and act as if it had just happened today, we evaluate the events in line with the negative belief formed. In other words, the main reason why the event we experienced when we were 5 years old still affects us is that that event is still alive for us.
How EMDR Works
EMDR supports the brain’s self-healing process. It aims to depersonalize the person against these events by processing traumatic events that cannot be processed. When people become desensitized to these events, it is seen that both the disturbing symptoms and the negative beliefs about the person and his environment disappear. An 8-stage, 3-way (past, present, future) protocol is applied in EMDR therapy. For this
We talk about the past in detail with our clients. Then, he created a therapy plan by taking into consideration the past events that feed the things that bother the person today, and the past, the present and the past.
We work with the future.
What can we work with?
• Panic Disorder
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Depression
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorders
• Grief Process
• Phobias
• Eating disorders
• Performance Anxiety
• Sexual/Physical Harassment
• Self-Confidence Issues
• Body Perception Disorders
• Coping with Stress
• Disturbing Memories
How Long Does EMDR Therapy Take?
EMDR is referred to as ‘short-term therapy’. How long the therapy will take will vary according to the problem, the past experiences of the person, and the current life conditions.
Our past affects our present, but we do not have to live with the traces of the past.
The tunnel may be dark for you right now, but there is always light at the end…
