What is Counselling?

Counselling is a form of psychological or talking therapy that offers people chance to change how they feel, maybe view things differently and ultimately gain a sense of overall wellbeing.

What is Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing [EMDR]?

The mind usually heals itself naturally in the same way the body does. Much of our natural coping mechanisms occur during sleep, Rapid Eye Movement [REM] Sleep.

Often disturbing events happen that stay with us in our memories and we feel distressed when we think about them. The brain cannot process traumatic or stressful experiences as it ordinarily does. The memory becomes ‘frozen in time’ and remembering the distressing event may feel as bad as going through it for the first time because the images and feelings haven’t changed. Such memories have a lasting negative effect that interferes with the way we see the world and how we relate to other people.

What happens when you are traumatised?
Most of the time your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when something out of the ordinary occurs and you are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car accident) or by being repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g. childhood neglect), your natural coping mechanism can become overloaded. This overloading can result in disturbing experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being “unprocessed”. Such unprocessed memories and feelings are stored in the limbic system of your brain in a “raw” and emotional form, rather than in a verbal “story” mode. This limbic system maintains traumatic memories in an isolated memory network that is associated with emotions and physical sensations, and which are disconnected from the brain’s cortex where we use language to store memories. The limbic system’s traumatic memories can be continually triggered when you experience events similar to the difficult experiences you have been through. Often the memory itself is long forgotten, but the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually triggered in the present. Your ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can therefore become inhibited. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way.