Offering EMDR at the Phoenix Center in Media, PA or via TeleTherapy!
484-440-9416 | [email protected]

Flashbacks, nightmares, and intrusive images from past experiences can cast a long shadow on our lives, making it challenging to move forward. Flashbacks are vivid and distressing recollections of traumatic events that can feel as if you’re reliving them. Nightmares are unsettling dreams that often revolve around past traumas or adversity. Disturbing mental images can pop up unexpectedly and cause significant distress in our lives long after an experience is over. Sometimes these disturbing images are related to violence, trauma, death, or other painful moments in our lives.

If you’re grappling with these distressing symptoms, there’s hope in the form of Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. EMDR therapy is a structured approach that has shown remarkable effectiveness in alleviating these symptoms. Here’s how it works:

How EMDR Therapy Helps:

  1. Resourcing: First we begin by helping you connect with some positive memories and positive images that can be used as helpful tools when we feel stressed, overwhelmed, triggered, or anxious. These positive resources are tools you will take with you and can use on your own in-between sessions to manage difficult emotions.
  2. Desensitization: EMDR therapy helps desensitize your emotional responses to traumatic memories. By gently processing these memories in a safe environment, their emotional intensity diminishes over time. While you will not forget the image or memory, EMDR works by reducing the emotional and physiological charge that we experience when thinking about a particular memory or image. EMDR effectively helps us change our relationship to the image or memory.
  3. Reprocessing: During EMDR sessions, therapists use bilateral stimulation, such as eye movements, to guide your brain in reprocessing traumatic memories. This helps you view them from a different perspective, reducing their impact on your daily life. The bilateral stimulation is based on neuroscience research and seems to activate the memory processing mechanisms in the brain (the same process that happens naturally each night during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep). The EMDR process helps your nervous system and your brain maintain dual awareness of the past memory and the present moment at the same time which in a gentle and titrated manner, which allows the brain to process the previously stuck memory.
  4. Integration: As EMDR therapy progresses, you’ll find that the disturbing images and emotions associated with your past experiences become less intrusive or disturbing. This allows you to regain control over your thoughts and feelings. The EMDR process involves identifying negative beliefs about ourselves and actively working to change those into new positive core beliefs. After processing past memories with EMDR, we will then work to desensitize present-day triggers, and finally to create some future templates imagining and practicing what it will be like to encounter previously triggering experiences in a new way.

The Result: Relief and Healing: EMDR therapy offers hope for those struggling with flashbacks, nightmares, and disturbing images. It can provide substantial relief by addressing the root causes of these symptoms and helping you build resilience. Many individuals experience a significant reduction in the frequency and intensity of these distressing experiences, paving the way for healing and a brighter future. For clients who are already engaged in an ongoing personal growth journey, connected to social support in their life, and otherwise mostly stable emotionally and psychologically – EMDR can provide relief after just a handful of sessions.

Seek Help Today: If you or someone you know is grappling with flashbacks, nightmares, or disturbing images from past experiences, consider reaching out to a qualified EMDR therapist. They can provide the guidance and support needed to embark on a journey of healing and relief.

Remember, there’s no need to suffer in silence. EMDR therapy is a powerful tool that can help you regain control over your life and find peace from the grip of past traumas.

Who is appropriate for EMDR therapy?

It is important to note that not everyone is the best fit for engaging in EMDR therapy. The best candidates for EMDR are individuals who have already established a social support system, developed self-awareness, are able to regulate their emotions when overwhelmed, have already learned coping skills, and who are otherwise relatively stable in terms of suicidality, alcohol/substance abuse, other addictive behaviors, self-harm, and overall mental health.

We also offer EMDR intensives, which may be best for clients who seek a more immersive treatment experience and can afford the time and financial cost of scheduling multiple hours or days of consecutive sessions with one of our specialists.

Why Choose the Phoenix Center for EMDR trauma therapy?

Our staff is composed entirely of therapists who specialize in trauma therapy and have devoted their careers to learning, practicing, and teaching trauma therapy. While our staff have training and certifications in various trauma treatments, every therapist and graduate student on our team is trained in EMDR. EMDR is a common language and shared treatment philosophy and modality amongst our team which has over 25 EMDR providers. The Phoenix Center started in 2015 as a practice primarily offering EMDR therapy and has become recognized by many in the professional community as an agency providing high-quality and ethical EMDR treatment on a larger scale than nearly any other organization in the Philadelphia area.

We also offer low-cost EMDR and trauma therapy through our internship program. We have 10 advanced graduate interns that we host at our center who we support in participating in EMDR basic training and provide 3-4 hours of weekly supervision and EMDR consultation to. Often of our graduate students have more hours of training in trauma therapy than other experienced therapists in the field. Sessions with our interns start at $85/hour and can be flexible based on our sliding scale options.

Offering EMDR at the Phoenix Center in Media, PA or via TeleTherapy!
484-440-9416 | [email protected]