A Simple and Metaphor-Guided View of Working with Complex Trauma using EMDR Phase One of EMDR therapy is an important part of the recovery process. It is often the point where a new client meets his new therapist. First impressions … Continue reading What’s So Complex about Complex Trauma? Phase One
The debate continues about the working mechanism of EMDR therapy. Dr. Shapiro’s original theory that EMDR may be similar to processes in REM sleep is less compelling when we consider the wide range of other highly effective forms of bilateral … Continue reading Is EMDR 30 Years Old?
If I had a talent when I was young, it was going away. Retreating deeper into that space that doesn’t have a name. If I have any talents now, they have grown from what I learned by being alert and … Continue reading Unwanted Embodiment
We are entering a new era of trauma awareness. We are just starting to be able to make visible the central role that trauma plays in human development, physical health, and in relationships of all types. We are recognizing that … Continue reading The Ethics of Not Treating Trauma
That Which Doesn’t Kills Us, Makes Us Stronger –Nietzsche In our age of growing trauma awareness, the resilience movement has a core conceptual problem. Resilience, when it comes to someone who has been traumatized, arrives as a functioning of healing. … Continue reading “That Which Does Not Kill Us” And Related Lies
When my son was six years old, he realized rather abruptly that we all have to die. I had a similar realization at about his age and I remember how suddenly and deeply that panic rolled through me. This realization … Continue reading “It Wasn’t That Bad:” Trauma and Invisibility
[Invited message for Mental Health Sunday delivered on 5/20/2018 at First Federated Church, North Jackson, OH. Message follows reading from Ezekiel 37:1-14: The Valley of the Dry Bones.] Good morning. I’m Tom and I’m a trauma therapist. When I started … Continue reading Faith, Hope, and Recovery
“Have you ever been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused?” It’s a standard intake question asked tens of thousands of times a day as part of mental health assessments all across the country. At the beginning of my career I asked … Continue reading Dancing Around the Unspeakable at Intake
All memory is individual, unreproducible – it dies with each person. What is called collective memory is not a remembering but a stipulating: that this is important, and this is the story about how it happened, with the pictures that … Continue reading Regarding the Trauma of Others
EMDR Therapy reprocessing involves three central components: you activate a traumatic memory, notice what comes up as you interact with the memory, and you do this while your brain receives a left-right stimulation. Noticing is the bright yellow line in … Continue reading If You Chase It, It Will Run
