144 North Main St. Branford, CT 06405
144 North Main St. Branford, CT 06405
Call for your free 15 minute consultation 475-221-8142
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144 North Main St. Branford, CT 06405
144 North Main St. Branford, CT 06405
Call for your free 15 minute consultation 475-221-8142
Trauma is most often experienced as memories of painful events with intrusive distressful reminders. When this is the case, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, or EMDR for short is approach is to target these memories for reprocessing which is a reset of how the memory is stored in the brain. However, when trauma occurs early in life even during pregnancy, memories aren’t formed in the same manner. Instead, the body holds the memory as a physical felt sense and through sensory symptoms. There simply are no words. In this situation, the EMDR Early Trauma Protocol is effective in accessing the way the body has “remembered” the uncomfortable symptoms indicating the trauma occurred.
“Our sensory world takes shape even before we are born. In the womb we feel amniotic fluid against our skin. We hear the faint sounds of rushing blood and a digestive track at work, we pitch and roll with our mother’s movements. After birth, physical sensations define our relationship to ourselves and to our surroundings… A cacophony of incomprehensive sounds and images presses in on our pristine nervous system. These events are shaping us, even as we don’t recall them.”
Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score”
With the EMDR early trauma approach, the focus is on time frames instead of memories, and body sensation and what you see, hear, smell, or taste when you review the timeframe. The review process asks you to listen through the eyes of your body and your senses instead of your mind when focused on a timeframe. The timeframes are usually 3-month periods, but this can vary depending on individual needs. Four key steps occur when reprocessing preverbal trauma:
The process includes tapping on your ankles by the therapist or self-tapping when preferred while focusing on whatever signs of trauma are present. Usually this is very well tolerated and easier to experience without memory attached to it. The process is repeated until the ages of 3-4 or when memories arise. Further interventions to assist healing of any remaining attachment distress are then utilized.
Those who has experienced the early trauma protocol report feeling more at peace, more at ease and find their relationships and family dysfunction to be much less challenging.
Although the early trauma protocol can be completed piecemeal in weekly sessions, it is inefficient and not cost effective. The ideal way to experience this type of trauma reprocessing is with extended sessions of several hours to several days. Because this therapy approach is subtle and is experienced as a felt sense instead of through thoughts, extended sessions allow it to unfold naturally and speeds up the healing process.
The best way to determine whether intensive therapy or a weekly therapy approach is best for you is to schedule a 15-minute phone consultation. If you decide, due to a need to use your insurance coverage or because you would like to do this therapy as part of longer-term therapy, you can expect it will take several months to complete the process of clearing early trauma.
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