EMDR Therapy & Trauma Therapy in Los Angeles, CA
You’re tired of struggling with trauma triggers, hypervigilance, and dissociation. Memories from past experiences come into your awareness unexpectedly, derailing your nervous system and causing you to spiral.
Nightmares, trouble sleeping, depression, and feeling always on edge are perhaps daily experiences for you and getting in the way of living your best life.
This trauma can be difficult to get past and may impact your relationships, your sleep, your feeling of safety in the world, and your ability to ‘be’ in your body.
Trauma therapy at Flourishment Psychology can help you heal from these events and regain a sense of well-being in your life. You don’t have to live in fear of your next flashback or trauma trigger.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Reasons to Go to Trauma Therapy
Sometimes things happen in our lives that shift the way we exist in the world. These events could be trauma—with a big T or a little t—and they are really big or scary and overwhelm our sense of being safe.
Many people experience trauma, whether it be a singular moment or a collection of events, that have long lasting effects which ripple through your soul and impact how you feel safe within the world.
This trauma could include ANYTHING that causes you to feel a loss of safety in your body and that overwhelms your coping abilities. Some examples include chronic abuse, assault, a natural disaster, attachment trauma, or the loss of a parent, family member, partner, or someone else close to you.
Symptoms Treated in Trauma Therapy
Common symptoms people experience following a trauma include:
Nightmares
Flashbacks
Feeling on edge and irritable
Avoiding thoughts, people, places, and things that remind them of the trauma
Trouble concentrating
Feeling responsible for what happened
Trouble remembering parts of what happened
Feeling depressed, angry, or numb
Reckless, risky, or self-destructive behavior
While many people develop PTSD after experiencing a traumatic event, having PTSD is not necessary in order to experience benefits from EMDR. You don’t have to live your life being held back by trauma and stuck in cycles of fight or flight. EMDR therapy can help you feel more grounded and centered in your body and shift any thoughts of blame, shame, and helplessness to more adaptive beliefs.
When trauma occurs, your nervous system gets hijacked into a stress response that is similar to the emotional response you had during the trauma.
The nervous system is our adaptive safety system which protects us when something dangerous or threatening occurs. We escape the danger through ‘flight’ or address the danger through ‘fight.’
EMDR Therapy
EMDR therapy is an evidence-based therapy proven through research to help process and integrate trauma memories and desensitize the body to these memories so that the nervous system is no longer hijacked and remains in it’s window of tolerance.
The results are that trauma memories are no longer as distressing, the sensations associated with the memory are weaker, and your core beliefs about yourself, others, and the world are more adaptive.
Whether we go back to the beginning to address an old wound that affects your adult life or process a more recent event, I will help you feel unstuck and integrate the trauma so that it no longer has power over your life.
EMDR Therapy as Part of Trauma Treatment
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR uses the brain’s natural ability to heal. EMDR is different from other forms of trauma therapy because it does not require you to talk in detail about the trauma.
Instead, we use eye movement to partially distract the brain in order to make new connections between the traumatic event and more recent experiences. This impacts how you understand what happened, the beliefs you hold, and leads to more adaptive thinking about the trauma.
I use EMDR to process trauma in the body through bilateral stimulation rather than words. We use bilateral stimulation to get out of your head and work through the trauma that is stuck in your nervous system.
As we process and integrate traumatic memories, we shift the way the memory was stored in the brain. This shift leads to creating more adaptive and balanced beliefs about what happened. We create new connections and new realizations about what happened and how you understand it along with relieving emotional distress from the memory.
As a trauma therapist, I have seen just how debilitating trauma can be. I know you’ve done everything you can to pretend it never happened or get on with your life. Yet, the trauma still holds power over you thriving in your life. I’ve helped hundreds of other clients who have struggled to cope with trauma and I’m confident I can help you as well.
What can EMDR Therapy help with?
Trauma
PTSD
Grief and Loss
Anxiety Disorders
Panic Attacks
Phobias
Dissociation
Depression
Attachment Wounds
Addiction
Chronic Pain Disorders
EMDR therapy is a powerful technique that uses the brain’s adaptive and resilient abilities to heal from trauma and other emotional distress.
Start EMDR Therapy as Part of Trauma Therapy in Los Angeles, CA
You do not have to live a life derailed by trauma triggers and symptoms. Let’s work together to start you on your healing journey to finding peace, feeling safe in your body, and reclaiming your power. Get started at Flourishment Psychology by following these easy steps:
Reach out to schedule a free 30 minute consultation with me, a trauma therapist.
Schedule your first appointment to begin trauma treatment.
Start feeling safe in your body and reclaim power in your life.
Other Counseling Services I Offer in Los Angeles, CA
I offer a variety of counseling services for individuals, women, therapists, and families. Besides EMDR therapy and trauma therapy, I also specialize in anxiety treatment, corporate wellness trainings, and clinical trainings. All of these services are offered in person in Los Angeles or virtually in California and New York.