Types of Trauma Treated by EMDR
When we hear the word trauma, many of us thing of sexual abuse, natural disasters, or war time experiences. And while those are common traumas we see regularly here at The Counseling Collective Fort Worth, I thought it would be helpful to list out other types of traumas and distressing experiences we see and process inside EMDR therapy. EMDR therapy is used to take out the distress of an unpleasant experience whether we would label it as a trauma or not. We use a scale of 0-10 to determine how distressing an experiencing is when we think of a memory. For example, I ask clients, ‘when you pull that memory up in your mind, on a scale of 0-10 where zero is no distress and 10 is the most distressing you can imagine, how distressing does it feel to you right now? This tells us if an event has been distress and would benefit from EMDR therapy.
Below is a list of trauma and distressing events that are regularly processed inside EMDR therapy. I’ve given a relevant example of each because many of us don’t have a framework for how something would show up in our lives.
Bullying – especially an early life experience where most did not have the skills they needed to cope
Emotional neglect – an example would be with a parent growing up where it was not ok to have or show emotions
Physical abuse – an example would be a parenting situation where their anger, rage or control took over and they hit you
Safety issues – you didn’t feel safe around one or both parents growing up
Betrayal in a relationship – there has been a betrayal inside an intimate relationship whether that be pornography, adultery or excessive loss of trust in some way
Humiliation – you have a moment when you were humiliated in the present of people that still causes you stress when you think about it
Addiction – you have had a parent or intimate partner who had an addiction of any kind
Panic attacks – you have panic attacks often, where your heart rate goes up and you think you are dying
Car wreck – you have had a past car wreck and feel fear when you are driving in certain circumstances
Assault – an example would be a high school or college sexual experience where you did not want the sexual touch
Shame – you grow up in a shame-based home or notice in the present shame is a constant nagging emotion you experience
Secondary trauma – you have had a close relationship or were in close proximity to someone that was going through an intense trauma
Scary incident – you have a scary incident you remember like a surgery, a close call to an accident, animal bite, etc.
Did you notice you got triggered reading any of the above examples? Did a past memory come to mind, your heart rate or breathing increase, your shoulders tensed up or you felt uncomfortable? If that happened to you, chances are you have an unresolved incident in your past that could use some therapy. Sometimes we can easily diminish things in our past. But if you find that when you think of a memory from your past and it is distressing, chances are EMDR therapy could be beneficial to you.