Thanks for letting me know your counselor has confidence in my work with EMDR (Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). As you may know, EMDR was developed in the late ‘80s by Dr. Francine Shapiro and has been identified as an effective treatment for PTSD by the Dept. of Defense and the V.A., as well as a large number of national, international, and foreign agencies that study trauma reactions (you can learn more about EMDR at www.emdria.org). In my clinical work, I’ve used it as well as other effective treatments for PTSD. While I do not have a private practice at the present time, finding an EMDR-trained clinician can be done by checking out the EMDR International Association’s website (noted above) or the one for the EMDR Institute (www.emdr.com). EMDRIA lists clinicians certified in EMDR however they were trained while the EMDR Institute only lists clinicians trained by it – the lists overlap to some degree.

For people new to investigating trauma treatments, EMDR provides clinical assistance by “jump starting” people’s own processing of their experiences – trauma experiences are those that, among other things, don’t or only very slowly change. You can get a fuller description of the approach at those websites I’ve listed. You’ll see it differs from exposure therapy, which has the person focus on the source of the negative emotion until its intensity fades, and from cognitive therapy, which challenges the negative thinking traumatized people are often stuck with. Both of these therapies also are widely recognized as effective and I and my patients have had success with all of them.

Working on trauma experiences can be, of course, tough – neglecting them can, in the long run, be tougher. You’re taking the right step in seeking out a treatment that has a solid body of research demonstrating its effectiveness with PTSD.