EMDR helps you overcome trauma
At My Denver Therapy, we use Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) as a standalone trauma therapy treatment or in addition to standard “talk therapy.” In EMDR sessions, we have a specialized conversation with you to help you reprocess memories and information to help you overcome trauma. We have therapists trained in EMDR in all three of our Denver area offices, and we also have EMDR Certified Therapists who have received additional training.
Some clients come to us specifically for EMDR because they’re already familiar with it or have had success with it in the past, but we also assess clients’ specific needs through sessions and determine if it’s the right path to help our clients move forward. EMDR helps people get clarity around what they could control about a traumatic incident and understand where they are now in relation to it. It helps create new perspectives to help you move forward by creating a clearer picture and understand of your reality.
A typical EMDR therapy session is usually between 50 to 90 minutes. In an EMDR session, you enter a state that’s similar to dreaming or REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Our therapists ask you a specific set of questions to help you integrate memories that have happened to you, the feelings associated with those memories, and the thoughts that you want to have about the incident.
We’ve found that our clients that use EMDR often experience dramatic, life-changing results. During a session, you may experience intense emotions, but by the end of the session, most people report a greatly reduced level of stress or lower levels of disturbance associated with the memory. For many people, EMDR is one of the most effective methods for treating trauma, and our experienced EMDR therapists in Denver, Lone Tree, and Greenwood Village are ready to provide this life-changing form of therapy for you.
Benefits of EMDR
- EMDR is one of the most effective and proven methods to treat trauma and PTSD.
- Changes your thoughts around traumatic events, helping you process difficult or traumatic memories so they no longer trigger anxiety or negative emotions.
- Creates a positive belief system that can transform the way that you think about yourself, your relationships, abilities, and self-confidence.
- Helps you escape negative patterns of thought, anxiety, and heavy feelings associated with an event or memory.
- May decrease or completely eliminate disturbing flashbacks associated with traumatic events and PTSD.
- Reshapes your inner beliefs, self-image, and the way that you see the world.
- Helps people with PTSD and trauma-related symptoms find transformative change often in a shorter number of sessions when compared to traditional therapy.
- While the number of sessions can vary on a per-client basis, studies have shown that as much as 90% of trauma survivors have no PTSD symptoms in as few as 3 EMDR therapy sessions. Other studies have found highly positive outcomes for clients within 6-12 sessions. EMDR has been proven time and time again to be a highly effective way to treat trauma, PTSD, and more.
- Research has also shown that EMDR can help treat symptoms associated with a traumatic event, such as stress, self-harm, and anger.
- Studies indicate that EMDR may also be effective for psychotic symptoms, including hallucinations, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and delusions.
How does EMDR work?
When a person is experiencing extreme levels of trauma, their brain is unable to process information at its regular levels. As a result, moments can become frozen in someone’s memory. Even if you want to move forward from the memory, they may replay in your mind over and over. Traditionally, EMDR therapy has been used to help people recover from traumatic events and PTSD, but it can also be used for many other types of symptoms.
In many cases, just remembering a traumatic moment can feel as bad as when someone went through it for the first time. Their feelings towards the memory of an image, sound, smell, feeling, or combination of them all haven’t changed over time.
When a person’s feelings become “stuck,” it can change how someone sees the world and how they relate to other people, events, and relationships. EMDR has been proven to have a direct effect on how people’s brains process information and heals someone’s body and mind from negative experiences, allowing them to move forward. EMDR has been proven to be highly effective in treating trauma in multiple clinical studies, including studies in the American Journal of Psychiatry. It can be a life-changing treatment for many people who have experienced trauma as adults or childhood trauma.
By restoring a person’s ability to process a memory, a person no longer relives the same emotions, images, and sounds when recalling an event. The memory remains, but it no longer has the negative, sometimes paralyzing emotions attached to it.
What is the success rate of EMDR?
EMDR therapy is a highly effective treatment for PTSD and trauma-related disorders. Research has shown success rates as high as 77%. If you’re looking for EMDR therapy in Denver or EMDR consultation as a therapist, we have some of the most experienced EMDR therapists in Denver who can help you process and heal from traumatic experiences.
Getting Started with EMDR therapy
Before we start seeing a client for EMDR therapy, we assess if EMDR would be a good fit for them. We ask them about their history of trauma, what they want to achieve, and if they’ve done EMDR before with a therapist. Many clients who come to us have done research on EMDR and know that they want to start, but with others who are new to it, we explain to them how it works and what to expect.
Many of our therapists use EMDR with their clients, and we also have EMDR Certified Therapists who have received additional training. We match clients with a therapist who specializes in what they’re looking for, whether that’s complex trauma, anxiety, relationship or attachment trauma, domestic violence, sexual assault, an accident or something else. We’ve found that some clients want to see someone who shares their faith, and others want to see someone who has seen clients like them before.
Fortunately, our therapists have worked with clients from all walks of life with a wide array of experiences, backgrounds, and traumas, so we’re able to find a therapist who is the right fit for them. We try our best to have you come in for an intake session within weeks, not months. While clients often ask us how many sessions EMDR will take for them to reprocess their trauma, the number varies significantly by person. In general, EMDR works significantly faster than traditional therapy and many other modalities.
In your first session or, we ask you questions to further assess if EMDR would be a good fit for you. If EMDR would be effective for what you want to achieve and the right therapeutic modality for you, we’ll typically get started after your initial intake sessions.
It doesn’t start immediately: Like with traditional therapy, we discuss the specific problems or events that brought you to therapy, along with the behaviors and associated symptoms that are affecting you. You don’t need to know what to do or how EMDR works. We’ll guide you through it.
Create goals and develop skills: By creating a treatment plan and helping you develop skills, we create a plan for your success. Even if the trauma you’re processing is deeply personal, troubling, or heavy, your sessions are designed for you to get the most out of your time. Sessions include reprocessing trauma and developing healthy coping mechanisms to stay emotionally regulated between sessions.
Memories aren’t erased or lost:EMDR doesn’t cause memory loss or erase past traumas. We use bilateral stimulation, usually with two small, handheld paddles or audio tones when in teletherapy, to help you transform the memory in your mind. We detach the negative emotions from the memories to desensitize you from the event, which changes how you feel about it in your mind and creates long-lasting change.
We still talk with each other: While EMDR is different from talk therapy, we listen to your story and check-in with you verbally during sessions to make sure you feel safe and calm. We might ask you to describe memories, but you aren’t forced to talk about your traumatic experience at length or in vivid detail if you don’t want to.
Sessions don’t have to feel heavy: Because some traumatic memories can be troubling or difficult to relive, the level of detail that you provide about it is up to you and your comfort level. We may ask you to recall images or memories of trauma, but you won’t have to repeatedly relive traumatic events in painful ways. We work with you to help you experience memories in ways that are most beneficial to you.
You feel calm and at peace after sessions: We help you develop coping skills, breathing techniques, and visualization exercises for before and after you process trauma. While talking about and visualizing memories can be difficult or upsetting, we use grounding exercises to help you leave every EMDR therapy session feeling calm and positive about the progress you’re making.
What is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapeutic approach that helps people efficiently heal from emotional trauma, blocks, abuse, anxiety, limitations, and negative life experiences. It works by stimulating the left and right sides of your brain to encourage the integration of thinking and feeling, sounds, and thoughts. EMDR targets the thoughts and feelings causing you pain. It helps people reframe traumatic events so that they don’t hold power over the person, long after the event has occurred.
If you’ve been feeling stuck from your past, EMDR can be extremely effective to help you move forward. Many people think that healing from their past isn’t possible or that things aren’t able to change because of things that have happened in their lives. Also, clients who have tried traditional forms of therapy and haven’t had the changes they hoped for often find success with EMDR therapy. EMDR counseling helps people heal from difficult and traumatic life situations of all kinds.
It’s a proven, highly-effective physiologically-based therapy that helps people move forward from past traumas by understanding them in a different way.
For over 20 years, EMDR-trained therapists across the country have used EMDR to successfully work with clients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, abuse, panic attacks, and more. With EMDR therapy, you can gain feelings of freedom, work through your trauma, practical coping skills, and the confidence you need to live life in a more complete, joyful way. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, Department of Defense, and Veteran’s Administration have all approved EMDR as an effective treatment for PTSD.
At My Denver Therapy, we’ve been using EMDR with our clients for years to create positive, transformative results for issues such as:
- Sexual abuse and assault
- Childhood trauma
- Anxiety
- Relationship trauma (divorce, domestic violence, feelings of rejection)
- Emotional and physical abuse and neglect
- Transitional life periods
We can provide psychiatric medication management
At My Denver Therapy, our in-house psychiatric nurse practitioner Shannon Keane (PMHNP-BC) can provide medication management and prescriptions to help treat behavior, mood, and mental health issues. As a board certified psychiatric nurse practitioner, Shannon is dual certified in family medicine and psychiatry, and she strives to provide patients with comprehensive strategies to improve and maintain their mental health.
By combining therapy with medication management within one therapy private practice, we’re able to provide a deeper level of support and an integrated approach to mental health for clients who have depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, trauma, or are looking into Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. Instead of searching for a therapist and a psychiatrist in Denver separately, we can save you time and create an integrated plan for your mental wellness by offering both in our Denver area offices.
Other Specialties
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Victor Frankl
Meet our therapists
My Denver Therapy is one of the largest woman-owned therapy private practices in Colorado with many of the best, most requested mental health therapists in the Denver Metro area.
As a therapist-owned practice with decades of combined experience, we care about seeing our clients heal, grow, and thrive. We’re one of the only therapy practices in Colorado with licensed professional counselors, marriage and family therapists, addiction counselors, social workers, and psychiatric nurse practitioners who actively see new clients. Whether you’re an adult, teen, young adult, couple, or family, our inclusive therapist team is built to specialize in you.
Our practice started with one therapist in a shared office suite, but we’ve grown to help thousands of people in Colorado by providing in-person therapy at our conveniently located Denver Metro area counseling offices in Denver, Greenwood Village, and Lone Tree, plus online therapy for clients throughout Colorado. Because of the way our team works, our therapists also provide consultation for other therapists and private practices in the Denver Metro area.
Our inclusive therapists provide some of the most innovative, effective, and in-demand forms of therapy available today, including EMDR, Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, CBT, and IFS. We also have more therapists trained in Ketamine-assisted therapy, EMDR, and more teen therapists and young adult counselors than nearly every other private practice in Denver.
We know that clients want to find the best therapists in Denver, so our team includes therapists with different backgrounds, specialities, and experiences to help you find the right fit. We’ll match you with one of our therapists who is the best for your goals, location, budget, and schedule to help you get started quickly.
We’re out of network for insurance, Tricare, and are unable to take Medicaid, but most of our therapists’ rates are lower than the local and national averages for therapy.
All of our therapists take a client-focused approach to counseling and approach each session with a commitment to your progress and growth.
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