How does EMDR help after an accident, a loss or violence?
Short answer
When an event was too big, the brain files it as something still happening rather than as the past. EMDR lets it finish that filing, so the memory gets a date and stops opening at every reminder. For a single recent event that usually takes six to twelve sessions.
People describe this as a mismatch. You know it is over. You can talk about it in a level voice. And then someone slams a door, or you catch a smell that was in the air at the time, and your body starts before you can think that you are safe.
That mismatch is not weakness and not a lack of will. It is exactly what happens when a memory was never filed properly: no date, no "finished" mark, the image intact, and a body still on standby.
What belongs here
- A road accident, a fall, an injury, emergency surgery
- The death of someone close, particularly a sudden one
- Physical or sexual violence, in childhood or later
- War, siege, displacement, and what came afterwards
- A difficult birth, pregnancy loss
- A run of smaller things that individually "were nothing", and together were not
That last one is the item people cross off for themselves. It does not have to be one large event. Repeated humiliation, years of fear at home or at school, and constant nameless tension are processed with the same method.
What we actually do
First we map. We list the events and choose an order — usually we do not start with the worst, but with something you can use to see how the method works on you.
Then they are processed one at a time. You do not have to say the details. You only need to be able to bring the memory to mind and tell me how strong it is, on a scale of nought to ten. The most complete piece of work I have seen was done by someone who never told me what was in the image.
When one event comes down, related ones often follow faster. That is common, and it is why the number of sessions does not grow in a straight line with the number of events.
The memory stays. What changes is the weight it carries.
Questions
What people ask me here first
It was twenty years ago. Is it too late?
No. An unprocessed memory does not age — that is exactly why it still opens at full volume after all that time. I have worked with people whose event was in childhood and whose charge was the same as on the first day.
I do not remember all of it. Can it still be done?
Yes. Gaps are a common part of this rather than an obstacle. We work with what you have — an image, a feeling in the body, even only knowing that it happened. The goal is not to reconstruct the event.
I am afraid I will fall apart if I open it.
Which is why nothing opens in the first two or three sessions. Those are history and preparation, and preparation means concrete ways back to steady, rehearsed before they are needed. Every session ends closed.
Twenty minutes, no charge
You do not have to explain what happened in order to book a first call. Saying that you are getting in touch is enough.