Authentic Alliance
A Licensed Clinical Social Worker Professional Corporation
Trauma Therapy
Trauma therapy can take many forms, the first stage starts with helping you feel you safer and helping you cope with triggers.
Trauma can occur due to an intense feeling of helplessness in reaction to negative events. It can be the result of a single incident, such as an assault, or a result of many incidents over time such as childhood abuse.
While in therapy you may learn skills from a program called Seeking Safety (Eg. Coping Handout), use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tools, as well as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Many of these programs focus on emotional regulation and learning how trauma has impacted your thinking and behaviors. When you are ready, we may use Flash and/or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). EMDR is a powerful treatment that Dr. Francine Shapiro discovered by chance in 1987. To date, over fifteen thousand psychotherapists have been trained to provide EMDR based on Shapiro's research. In addition, we may use the Flash Technique to prepare for EMDR or to quickly desensitize memories which are distressing to you.
In preparing for EMDR we spend a good deal of time building up your positive qualities or inner resources. During an EMDR session, we use a website that gives you tones and/or a dot to watch, which activate both sides of the brain. Each session can last 50-90 minutes.
EMDR relies on the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, a theory about how your brain stores memories. When a person experiences trauma, the brain may start to process information differently. A person who has experienced trauma or negative life events may relate in ways that feel "stuck" or repetitious. EMDR helps to move people out of these negative mental patterns and into more healthy functioning. We help people from past events such as sexual abuse, physical assault, witnessing or experiencing violence, deaths, and accidents.
Due to ethical guidelines, we are not able to share client testimonials on this website but you can view two videos below that give you a sense of how EMDR works.
