EMDR ONLINE OR IN PERSON IN MANHATTAN
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing (EMDR) in NYC
Trauma can impact every area of your life. EMDR can help.
Whether you want to heal emotional wounds or just get through whatever is happening now, trauma can leave scars you can’t always tackle on your own. As a trauma therapist, one of the types of therapy I specialize in is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) as a treatment for trauma.
What is EMDR?
EMDR is a research-backed type of psychotherapy that has been found to help with a variety of symptoms and traumatic experiences including single-event traumas (natural disasters, car accidents, etc.), interpersonal violence, sexual assault, childhood trauma, and complex trauma.
How Does EMDR Work?
During EMDR therapy, different forms of bilateral or dual awareness stimulation (usually a combination of visual, tactile, or audio) are used to help you to reprocess traumatic memories.
This therapy uses the natural way our brains already have to recover from traumatic events and memories. Researchers believe that this process involves helping to strengthen the communication between several different areas of the brain (including the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex) that can be disrupted once trauma has happened.
Our brains naturally have the ability to heal from traumatic experiences - but that process sometimes goes awry. EMDR taps into the brain’s inherent ability to move towards health and helps it reprocess these traumatic memories, allowing normal healing to resume. This type of therapy doesn’t take away the memory of the event or make it feel as if the trauma never happened, but it does help you to have a new, less reactive relationship with the memory. The experience is still remembered, but the fight, flight, or freeze response from the original event is resolved.
For more in depth information and research, more information can be found here.
Frequently asked questions about EMDR
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Absolutely. Research has found EMDR to help with a range of issues including:
Anxiety, panic attacks, and phobias
Chronic Illness and medical issues
Depression and bipolar disorders
Dissociative disorders
Eating disorders
Grief and loss
Pain
Performance anxiety
Personality disorders
PTSD and other trauma and stress-related issues
Sexual assault
Sleep disturbance
Substance abuse and addiction
Violence and abuse
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Time and time again, a broad range of research has shown the effectiveness of EMDR. It’s widely considered one of the best treatments for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and it has been endorsed as an effective therapy by many organizations including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, National Alliance on Mental Illness, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the U.K. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs/Dept. of Defense, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the World Health Organization.
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It varies.
A wide range of studies have found that when dealing with single incident trauma (i.e. car accidents, natural disasters, sexual assault), many client experiences improvement in symptoms in even just 8-12 sessions.
Clients with multiple traumas and/or complex histories of childhood abuse, neglect, and poor attachment, however, may require more extensive therapy.
The length of treatment is something that we can work together to navigate.
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Most insurance companies do not distinguish between EMDR and other forms of talk therapy such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). If your insurance plan has mental health benefits, it most likely covers EMDR as a therapy modality.
That being said, EMDR typically requires longer sessions (60-90 minutes) than other forms of psychotherapy (45-50 minutes) and your insurance company may not may not pay the additional cost associated with an extended session.
If you’d like to learn more about how to use your out-of-network benefits may cover EMDR, feel free to book a free consult where we can speak more in depth about this topic.
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The goal of EMDR therapy is to completely reprocess the traumatic events and memories that are causing problems and to include new information that is adaptive. EMDR aims to reduce certain symptoms including intrusive memories or thoughts, hypervigilance, irritability flashbacks, negative changes in thinking or mood, and any other trauma symptoms you may be experiencing. EMDR focuses not only on shifting past memories but also on alleviating present symptoms.
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While originally developed as an in-person model of therapy, research has shown that EMDR can also be effective via telehealth. Since the pandemic, several virtual, HIPAA-compliant, EMDR platforms have been developed. These platforms have helped to make EMDR accessible and flexible for people who need a telehealth option.
I’m happy to offer both virtual (telehealth) and in person EMDR. Whether you’re looking for a virtual or in person experience, I’d be happy to discuss options.