Clients can achieve improved personal performance, satisfaction, and happiness in as little as three therapy sessions with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

EMDR is a psychotherapy procedure that targets and changes negative, core beliefs that you hold about yourself. Negative beliefs develop in response to prior, negative experiences that remain unprocessed and unresolved on an unconscious, emotional level. As a consequence, you then may feel confused, helpless, sad and angry, without knowing why.

To briefly explain, emotions generate strong beliefs on a feeling level that are difficult to change once reinforced and encoded into emotional memory; thus, a presentation that did not go well in front of classmates years ago becomes generalized into a social phobia around public speaking today. Another example would be the kid in high school who loved soccer and worked very hard to make his team but was cut because he was too slow. As a result, he develops from that experience an attitude that links his efforts to poor performance, thus confusing desire to succeed with potential failure and emotional pain. Years later he is puzzled how work-related, performance pressure tends to manifest into related feelings of sadness and loss.

Another example could be the girl that was teased for being a few pounds overweight when entering her teens. She then develops a belief that to be accepted, one can never be too thin but later develops an eating disorder. Or what about the kid that sang at home with a microphone but was hit on the head with it by his abusive father who told him to be quiet and that he did not have the talent to sing. Now a microphone takes on a very different, emotional meaning when the older teen is assigned a part in his high school play to sing in front of his classmates or when he must use a microphone with his debate team. Years later, as an adult, he ponders why he always feels more comfortable when alone while resistant, anxious, and confused under pressure to perform. And lastly, what about the student that studied hard to overcome a learning disability but no matter how great her effort, she felt her parents wanted and expected more, leaving her feeling a disappointment and failure to those she loved the most.

Generally speaking, these examples illustrate an emotional but unconscious confusion between past and present performance. This is how the past can influence the present without us knowing it. But there is hope. EMDR is the key needed to unlock those negative emotions that drive core beliefs about self, moving emotional pain from disturbance to resolution, while freeing clients and their innate growth and potential toward improved and greater levels of professional and personal performance, happiness and satisfaction.

If interested in learning more about EMDR and how it can help you, please call me for an initial consultation.