EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) helps your brain process trauma naturally.

According to the theory behind the approach, traumatic and painful memories can cause post-traumatic stress when you don’t process them completely. Then, when sights, sounds, words, or smells trigger those unprocessed memories, you re-experience them. This re-experiencing leads to the emotional distress and other symptoms recognised as PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

EMDR is recommended by NICE as a treatment for PTSD . Trauma can leave memories stuck, affecting how you live in the present. EMDR reduces the emotional pain of those memories.

EMDR aims to reduce symptoms of trauma by changing how your memories are stored in your brain. In a nutshell, an EMDR therapist does this by leading you through a series of bilateral (side-to-side) eye movements as you recall traumatic or triggering experiences in small segments, until those memories no longer cause distress.