When you experience a traumatic event you may find that you have difficulty getting over it. You may have nightmares and anxiety attacks. A lot of things may cause you to remember it, and some of the time, it may feel like the crisis is happening all over again. Your life may appear very normal and possibly no one knows that you are experiencing these problems.

You may be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. This condition can arise from any stressful, upsetting or frightening incident, such as: a break-in; a car accident; a death; being a victim of crime such as robbery, mugging, abuse or rape; sudden marital upheaval; or being fired from your job with no forewarning. It can have occurred recently or years ago. Many adults still suffer the repercussions of childhood incidents such as sexual or physical abuse and hospitalizations.

There is a therapeutic technique that is being used very successfully. This technique is called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and it is receiving a great deal of positive attention from the medical, psychiatric and social work community. To use it properly, it requires extensive training beyond the counselling/psychotherapy training.

When the therapist is experienced, this technique is very easy to perform and very simple from the client’s point of view. It uses the theory that Rapid Eye Movement or REM, which occurs during the dream period of sleep serves the purpose of processing the day’s events and storing them in long-term memory. It is believed that events that are too stressful are not processed in this way and are therefore stored in a way that keeps them feeling new and just as upsetting as when they first occurred. If you can imagine the upsetting situation as being frozen in your mind like a photograph that never changes, EMDR helps your brain to turn it into a movie that moves on and finishes, so that you can get past the upset. Many people find that only 1 to 3 sessions can make a remarkable difference in how they feel, even though some of them have been carrying the memories for years. This method, especially when used together with talk therapy, provides a wonderful new way to help people with these kind of traumatic memories