31/08/2026
For so many of us, PTSD has two elements.
The first is the near-term trauma, death in battle, refugee suffering, sexual assault, and other devastating experiences. This is vital and important, and often serves as the starting point for healing.
EMDR then almost naturally seeks out earlier trauma that informs our response to adult tragedy.
In other words, our younger trauma can serve as a modern echo of adolescent abuse.
How does this happen?
As children, our parents may have told us that we were cowards, failures, or that we were somehow not enough. We may have also experienced feelings of abandonment. Then, when tragedy occurs in adult life, these earlier experiences can become our fallback, default beliefs:
“I’m a coward.”
“I’m a failure.”
“I’ve been abandoned.”
EMDR brings healing by naturally questioning these emotions and attending to the beliefs attached to them. As these false or now-irrelevant beliefs are teased out, almost like untangling a knot of hair, we can gain greater objectivity and detachment from the adolescent messages imposed upon us through poor parenting.
Through eye movement, EMDR can allow for a rapid shift in our understanding of abusive behaviour and mediocre parenting. Our present perspective is altered, shifted, and understood anew.
This is the magic of EMDR.
A quick and efficient approach to healing that can, in some cases, take as little as 4–10 hours.
