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Address Trauma Using World-Renowned EMDR Therapy In San Diego With Jordan Zipkin, Licensed EMDR Therapist
EMDR Therapy in San Diego, California
Wish you could wave a wand and have all your painful memories deleted? EMDR therapy in San Diego, CA might be the men’s mental health tool you’ve been looking for! Read on to learn how rapid eye movement therapy works and how it can help you.
How Does EMDR Therapy Work to Help Me?
Are you living with a memory you’d like to forget? Is there something you’ve felt or been through that you wish you could get rid of, but you have no idea how or where to even begin? Maybe you feel like your life would be better—or at least different—if you weren’t carrying this heavy memory around with you. Your memory is seemingly infinite. However, your ability to deal with how that feels every day is decidedly not.
You’re a professional, a partner, and a driven man, but you’re struggling and no one knows. You are expected to get on with and through things. But you were never taught to feel your feelings or to explore what they mean and you definitely didn’t get the chance to learn to share them. So how does anyone expect you to be comfortable doing those things?
With EMDR therapy in San Diego, you might be able to bypass the discomfort of healing and facing the pain that makes you feel powerless. All while gaining control and confidence along the way.
How does EMDR therapy work?
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, often shortened to EMDR, is a relatively new player in the mental health and wellness game. It’s a powerful tool that uses eye movement and bilateral stimulation to help you process your painful memories. Rather than just talking about them.
Developed over decades of research, the general principle of EMDR is that rapid eye movement can help reduce the amount of distress you experience when you’re thinking about things that are uncomfortable. By tapping into that knowledge, your San Diego-based EMDR therapist can help you to establish a rhythmic pattern of eye movement along with some other sort of cue (like tapping or snapping). This will help to override your panic response in the face of a deeply uncomfortable emotion.
To further answer the question about how EMDR therapy works, according to the EMDR National Association, it directly impacts the way your brain processes information and pain. This process helps you take a shortcut to maximize your healing potential while minimizing the pain you’ll feel getting there. For many people, reliving the things that they can’t let go of will trigger a sense of shutdown in their minds. In these cases, you end up going through it without really getting into it. EMDR reverses that balance. It gives you the power to process your pain without the discomfort of doing the work to get through it.
What if I don’t like to talk about my mental health? Will EMDR Therapy still work?
It’s almost like rapid eye movement therapy was designed for men like us who have spent our entire lives being told to suck it up, be men and equate our masculinity to those phrases. You’ve spent your entire life being conditioned not to feel your feelings. As an adult, you’re expected to have the language and ability to adeptly navigate emotions you weren’t ever taught to acknowledge at all. Even if you’re managing to get by in that kind of chaos, you’re not thriving. You’re carrying the burden of someone else’s pain. Meaning that you’re paying the price for the fact that no one ever made you feel okay about voicing it.
EMDR therapy works without talking through it
Through bypassing the talking part of therapy, it gives you permission to dig into the meat of the mess in your head. That’s what makes EMDR therapy in San Diego, CA, so revolutionary for men’s mental health. It’s ideal for professional, hard-working guys like you who crave more but feel trapped by the frustrating insistence that you have conversations you don’t like, don’t want, and aren’t working.
You don’t have to like talking about your mental health. And you aren’t going to have to figure out how to do it in order to see the results of EMDR therapy. Imagine that your short temper and perplexing responses to everyday situations are a storm. Whenever you’re going through something, that experience is only one element of what’s getting mixed up and thrown around inside the storm. All the feelings you never got to feel, and memories that never healed are adding intensity to the storm. Honestly, the last thing you want to do is talk about any of it when you’re just trying to get through it. You know that when you find a way through the storm, you’ll find calmer skies on the other side.
How Can EMDR Therapy help me?
Initially developed as a form of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD) Treatment, EMDR continues to prove a valuable treatment for a variety of experiences. This therapy cheat code is no longer exclusively available to people who are experiencing traumatic flashbacks. Now, no matter what you’re processing, you might find yourself equipped with a powerful tool to move past it effectively when you work with an EMDR-trained therapist right here in San Diego.
Some of the things that might be easier to overcome through EMDR are
- Substance abuse or dependency
- Intrusive thoughts
- Flagging self-confidence
- Depression (even Seasonal)
- Fearful tendencies or phobias
- Anxiety and Panic Attacks
- Feelings of shame
- Chronic physical pain
- Bouts of anger you can’t manage
- Intimacy performance anxiety
- Repressed and painful memories
For many of us, it’s not just one big moment that’s created a sense of disconnect and led to higher levels of stress, tension, and mental frustration. It might be a whole patchwork of small problems that have built up into an impenetrable force. No matter what you’re going through, investing in therapy that lets you access your full potential can help to break down the barriers in your life right now.
Men experience unique benefits from EMDR Therapy
There has never been a cultural movement that encourages men to talk about their mental health. Even as the tone shifts to encourage young boys to embrace emotional language and expression, men are held apart from this new narrative. We can use EMDR to challenge the status quo and become mavericks in our own mental wellness. Men who get support in exploring their relationship with masculinity and gender roles alongside solving their own struggles are more likely to be the kind of guy that inspires change, instead of aspiring to be like others.
The way men experience the world is unique. So the tools you use in therapy to overcome barriers should be designed for you. With EMDR therapy, you’ll be supported in creating meaningful change through reprocessing instead of repeating the same conversations and experiences for months on end. Facing those challenges and traumas you’ve endured head-on is still possible without them. For men who weren’t given the gift of acceptance, it’s an invaluable approach to accessing real recovery. Despite a society that denied you acceptance for your emotions.
Here is what you can expect during EMDR therapy sessions
Whether you’ve been through a life-shattering traumatic experience or are hoping to overcome the build-up of many small, sharp hurts over your lifetime, we’ll go about it the exact same way. Don’t worry. You won’t be expected to walk in and divulge your deepest darkest secrets with anyone.
During the initial consultation with Stress Solutions, we’ll have a conversation about what you’re looking for to ensure that the therapist you’re matched to is ideal for your needs. This consultation will set us up for the first appointment, where you’ll do all the paperwork and introduce yourself in whatever way is most comfortable. Once you feel comfortable in the space and with your San Diego-based therapist, you’ll be invited to begin the process of EMDR.
Though it’s important to be able to access and share your emotions in order to communicate with your loved ones, EMDR has a different route to getting you there. The good news is that, within the 8 steps of EMDR, most of them will focus on actively reprocessing pain instead of talking about it.
The 8 stages of EMDR Therapy
1. History and plan making
We will talk about what you’ve been through, your goals, and the priorities you’ve got in finding some relief. We’ll take note of what you want to accomplish, the triggers that brought it to your attention, and any memories that are particularly relevant to those things. This information will be used to create a treatment plan together.
2. Preparing for what’s next
In order to work together effectively, your trust in your EMDR therapist is key. We’ll talk about what the process will look and feel like. This includes details on time length, transitionary periods, and support that’ll be available to you if you need or want it. You’ll gain key tools to help you manage anything that comes your way outside our session time so that you can begin to take control of your own confident healing.
3. Assessing what you need from EMDR therapy
With the things we’ve talked about in mind, we’ll dial in on the most pressing pain point and begin taking steps to work on the way it’s being processed (or, as is often the case, is not being processed at all!). This is the equivalent of setting a quest or mission, so we know exactly what we’re trying to accomplish with rapid eye movement therapy.
4. Desensitize the pain with EMDR therapy
While you focus on the negative (or trigger) memory, you will also engage in bilateral stimulation. For many, this is a rapid eye movement pattern. We’ll fine-tune the speed, movement type, and length of these situations as needed to ensure you’re getting the most out of your time in this reprocessing space. While you focus on that memory and the eye movement simultaneously, your brain will be busy undoing and re-learning the way it responds to the distressing memory in question.
5. Installing a new memory
You’ll take this chance to give yourself encouragement and create a new response. You may now instill a sense of calm or strength, creating resistance or resilience to pain instead of the need to escape it.
6. Scanning for Success
When you feel you’ve successfully reprocessed the painful memory, your EMDR-trained therapist will then assess you for any residual signs of tension or distress. We’ll look at the way you react to the memory in question now. If needed, we can repeat or re-calibrate the desensitization step to alleviate any remaining difficulty.
7. Closure
It’s important that you leave every session with a sense of accomplishment and peace. Even if we can’t get through the entire process on a particularly traumatic memory. You’ll be supported in finding a sense of calm and stability through the tools you’ve learned along the way before you step back into the daily grind.
8. Re-evaluation
At your next EMDR therapy session, we’ll do a real quick once-over of where you’re at with things. You want to be sure that the results you saw in your previous session have remained in place. As well as ensure that you have the tools you need to overcome anything else that’s come up. This time is perfect for figuring out the next step, answering questions, or identifying the next memory you want to reprocess.
Every step in the EMDR process is critical in helping you achieve confident, complete healing. Your treatment will be complete when all the memories that currently create barriers in your life have been reprocessed, and you feel capable of moving forward with access to your emotions and strength.
Ready to find solutions to what’s stressing you out?
Through EMDR therapy, you’ll gain the tools to overcome the past experiences you can’t shake. You can use them to overcome whatever comes next in life. EMDR is a multipurpose tool that brings with it the understanding of the infinite capability you already possess. When working with Stress Solutions for EMDR or other types of therapy, we’ll ensure you’ve got the tools you need so you can thrive.
Free Yourself from the Trauma of the Past With EMDR Therapy In San Diego, CA
If you are seeking EMDR therapy in San Diego, then our understanding EMDR therapists are here for you. You can move past the trauma of what you have experienced and the memories that won’t seem to leave you be. Learn more about EMDR therapy at Stress Solutions by following these steps:
- Contact us for a free 15-minute consultation
- Schedule your first EMDR therapy appointment
- Enjoy living without the weight of painful memories
Other Online Therapy Services I Offer in California, Oregon, & Florida
As a San Diego therapist, I offer several online therapy services in California, Oregon, and Florida. Such as stress management, therapy for men, and trauma therapy. As well as personal addiction counseling, couples therapy, and marriage counseling.
