Trauma Processing

EMDR Processing - What to expect: If you decide to engage in Trauma Processing at Akua Family Therapy, you will be working with Aaron Collins, LMFT. Aaron uses a treatment called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for helping clients work through and find healing, relief, and alleviation of your distress associated with stressful events, incidents and memories. We will spend some time building rapport and establishing a safe space where you feel comfortable in the therapy room and where you feel a trusting connection with your therapist. You will be asked to talk about the reason for seeking therapy, and about what is distressing you most. Your therapist will take a history of past stressors, trauma events, and adverse experiences. Your stressors may be associated with a recent event, or something that is coming up in the future. 

You will also be introduced to several grounding, coping and resourcing strategies for helping you to reduce the intensity of your anxiety, distress, and triggered feelings. We will initially focus a lot on helping you feel safe, secure and grounded with deep breathing, learning bilateral stimulation techniques, use of guided imagery and visualization techniques. These resources will help you to feel in control of shifting your thoughts and to take your mind off of your distress. 

Once you and your therapist believe that you are ready to move forward with trauma processing, we will move into selecting target memories, assessing and working through them with the use of eye movement/bilateral stimulation.

EMDR has been successfully used to treat: Anxiety, Grief & Loss, Panic Attacks, Depression, Addictions, Anger, Phobias, Performance Anxiety, Sleep Problems, Traumatic Memories, Low Self-Esteem, Trust Issues, and more.

Akua Family Therapy uses a client centered approach to working with all our clients. Whether trauma is your main reason for coming to therapy or a secondary issue for you, all our therapists take a trauma-sensitive and culturally-sensitive approach to working with you, your experiences, feelings and needs. If you are dealing with complexed trauma or trauma is the primary reason you are seeking therapy, you may be referred to EMDR work with Aaron Collins, LMFT. When Aaron is unavailable we may refer you to someone outside our practice.