Learn how EMDR therapy helps people process past experiences, reduce anxiety triggers, and build healthier emotional responses.

Lately, many people feel that anxiety is at an all time high. At our practice, we regularly hear from people who are struggling with anxiety, panic symptoms, or overwhelming life stress.

Many people try talk therapy, learn coping skills such as breathing techniques, or take medication, but still feel stuck.

One approach that can be particularly helpful is EMDR therapy for anxiety. EMDR is a structured, research-based treatment that helps people process distressing experiences that may still be triggering anxiety in the present.

While EMDR is often associated with trauma treatment, many people are surprised to learn that it can also be highly effective for anxiety.

EMDR is an evidence-based therapy that helps people heal from trauma and distressing memories. The mind can often heal itself naturally, in the same way as the body does. Much of this natural coping mechanism occurs during sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Most of the time, your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when you are traumatized by an overwhelming event 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 an 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, which are disconnected from the brain's cortex where we use language to store memories. This natural process of the brain putting away memories is God’s plan for helping us manage experiences and information.  EMDR allows the brain to do heal itself, which is what God naturally created it to do.