Indigo Oliver is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) working in private practice in Yukon, Oklahoma. She provides counseling services to children, adolescents, and adults. Her areas of focus include anxiety, depression, trauma and life transitions. She is affirming of individuals in the LGBTQ+ community.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, and it is a technique that therapists use to treat traumatic memories. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation to reprocess traumatic memories and decrease the distress associated with them. Bilateral stimulation can be the eye movements you may be familiar with from TV or movies, or it can also be tapping or auditory stimulation. EMDR has been approved for the treatment of traumatic memories and for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is recognized as an effective treatment by the World Health Organization, the American Psychiatric Association, and the Department of Veteran Affairs.
More than 30 randomized controlled trials have been conducted on EMDR. In some of those studies, 84-90% of single trauma victims no longer met the criteria for PTSD after only three 90 minute sessions.
EMDR therapy has been found through research to achieve similar results to Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) or Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), without the homework between sessions and with less verbal processing.
Therapists who are certified to practice EMDR go through extensive training and consultation throughout the course of the rest of their career.
Trauma is a word that many people are hesitant to associate with themselves. Part of that comes from misunderstandings about what the word “trauma” means. While trauma can be “Big T Traumas” such as a veteran coming back from war and having flashbacks, “little t traumas” can also be anything that at the time felt too overwhelming, too scary, too terrifying, too bad to handle.
Many of my adult clients often have trauma from childhood abuse, neglect and emotional abandonment, growing up as part of the LGBTQ+ community, toxic and/or abusive relationships, sexual assault, and single incident traumas (witnessed or experienced).
As a result of these experiences, many of my clients show symptoms of flashbacks, intrusive thoughts or voices, depression, anxiety (including fears, phobias or panic attacks), irritability, low self-esteem, sexual dysfunction, sleep disturbance, difficulties in school or at work, and difficulties with social connection.
Therapists who provide EMDR to children undergo further training. For children, EMDR can mitigate the impact of adverse childhood experiences on a child’s health and wellbeing as they develop into the future.
Common adverse childhood experiences include divorce or separation, moves, single incident traumas (ex: scary experience while swimming, witnessing someone getting hurt), bullying (in person or online), childhood abuse, sexual abuse, having a family member with mental illness, witnessing domestic violence, or witnessing frightening media.
As a result of these experiences, many children I work with experience difficulties with big emotions, social anxiety, difficulties with social connection, phobias, performance anxiety, low self-esteem, apprehension about change, depression, nightmares, fear of nighttime or sleeping in their own bed, and separation anxiety.
EMDR is an 8 phase process.
Adverse Childhood Experiences explained
What is it like to experience EMDR? (video)
The EMDR International Association has a journal called Journal of EMDR Practice and Research that can be searched online for research on how EMDR works with different diagnoses, client populations or client experiences.