Psychotherapy, Counselling and EMDR – what is the right approach for you? EMDR has been a service offered by the therapy community for a number of years. However, it is something that has become more available privately in recent years. So, what is the difference between psychotherapy and counselling and EMDR? How do you know which approach would benefit you? Counselling and psychotherapy also know as talking therapy offers a safe space for a client to explore personal, social or psychological difficulties. Different therapists will use different approaches to help a client examine and manage the difficulties they are having to find ways to move forward. To find out more about the approaches Paul uses in counselling and psychotherapy please take a look at the About Paul page You can also see the kinds of issues that counselling and psychotherapy can help with by taking a look at the Counselling Services Page.
How long you will come to counselling or psychotherapy will depend on the nature of your difficulty. It also depends on your commitment to change. People change at different rates and there are no right or wrong time periods as some people adapt to change more quickly or slowly than others. Making changes in your life is not always easy and is the reason that you are experiencing difficulties.
EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a form of psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro starting in 1988. It is an approach often used to help people who have experienced trauma, abuse, bullying, social humiliation, depression, anxiety, PTSD and bereavement.
When a person experiences something traumatic, often they may feel overwhelmed. When our brain’s are overwhelmed by our circumstances they don’t fully process what is going on. This can mean that the memory of an event may get “stuck” in a person’s mind this memory can stay very vivid and intense. The person feels like they are reliving the experience and the distress they felt at the time, over and over again. It’s like a person has become stuck reading the same page in book over and over and they aren’t able to turn the page.
EMDR helps the person to turn the page, unstick the memory and reprocess what happened so it isn’t as intense. It also helps the person to reduce the emotional impact of the memory, so that when they do think about it the feelings are not as intense and strong.
In a session of EMDR the client will be asked to think about the traumatic thing that has happened to them. While they do this they are asked to move their eyes from side-to side, hear a sound in each ear alternately or feel a tap on each had alternately.
It is thought that the effect is similar to what occurs when we are sleeping in the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage of sleep. In this stage we move our eyes rapidly from side to side as our brain processes what happened in the day. The International EMDR Association has a useful Introduction Video Here.
You might be reading this and be thinking that EMDR sounds interesting but you are not sure if it is for you. That’s ok, because EMDR can be incorporated with traditional counselling or psychotherapy sessions, and this is something that Paul often offers initially in order to understand your background and then do a separate session or sessions of EMDR. For more information about the EMDR that Paul offers please take a look at the EMDR Page on this website
If you think that EMDR might be the right approach for you but you are not sure, why not ring up Paul to have a short conversation about how he can help you. Please call on 07843 813 537 or fill in the form on the Contact Page, if he doesn’t answer he is probably in a session, please leave him a message and he will call you back as soon as he can. For more informaion about Paul please take a look at the About Paul Page, Frequently Asked Questions Page and The Counselling Services Page.
