Trauma lives along a spectrum, occurring as a single event or a layered experience shaped by years of ongoing harm. You can often see the childhood wounds that have compounded over time. Repeated experiences often create what’s called complicated trauma and can leave you feeling stuck in ways that are hard to explain.
Traditional talk therapy can certainly help, but when describing your experience is tough, or you aren’t in a place where you can relive the details, you may want to explore alternative options. This is where EMDR has potential.
What Makes Trauma Complicated?
Complicated trauma, sometimes called complex PTSD or C-PTSD, typically develops from prolonged or repeated exposure to significant and negative experiences. People who have lived through domestic violence, relationship trauma, abuse, childhood neglect, or chronic emotional harm commonly experience this.
These types of traumatic events create deep and painful memories that reshape how your nervous system functions. Additionally, they impact your relationship with yourself and how you interact with your world.
Living with complicated trauma often causes feelings of shame and emotional dysregulation. It can also make it difficult to fully trust other people and leave you feeling disconnected from your physical body. For many people, talking through these feelings doesn’t reach deep enough for full healing.
How EMDR Approaches Trauma Differently
Since its inception, EMDR has gained recognition as a highly effective and evidence-based option for treating trauma. This method taps into your brain’s natural healing powers, working directly with how memories are stored and processed.
During trauma, the brain shifts focus to survival mode, causing normal memory processing to take a back seat. Painful memories related to your trauma can become stuck in place, resurfacing at inconvenient times to cause emotional distress. You may experience recurring bodily sensations or a jolt back to that moment, triggered by a certain sound or smell.
EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, often through guided eye movements, to activate both hemispheres of your brain while focusing on a target memory. These eye movements work similarly to your REM sleep cycle to reprocess the target memory so it can be stored in a way that no longer triggers you. EMDR helps your brain finally close the loop of the trauma.
What EMDR Looks Like for Complicated Trauma
For people working through complicated trauma, the pace of the process is slowed down and approached more carefully. The initial phases are a bit more elaborate, building a strong rapport between the client and therapist before moving on to addressing the trauma. This includes:
- Building a trusting therapeutic relationship
- Developing nervous system regulation skills
- Establishing internal resources for safety and stability
- Learning to tolerate difficult emotions without becoming overwhelmed
These foundational steps are an important part of the healing process. To move forward, you need to have a strong sense of stability first. The main goal is to help the brain find a place where it feels safe to process the burden it’s been carrying. There is also an option to weave polyvagal concepts into the healing process, helping you understand your nervous system responses and build the capacity to move between activation and calm.
What Changes With EMDR
Through EMDR, you can find relief from memories that once carried a significant emotional charge. You can think about the past without feeling completely swallowed by it. Many people report reduced anxiety, fewer intrusive thoughts, a stronger sense of self-worth, and greater presence in everyday life. You can read more about it on our website here: EMDR – Spencer Psychology
EMDR clients share their stories:
Learn more at emdria.org.
Ready to Begin?
Healing from complicated trauma takes time and requires the right tools. The path is rarely linear, but recovery is possible with EMDR therapy for complicated trauma. If you’ve been carrying the weight of complicated trauma and are ready to start moving forward, we are here to help. Connect with us to take to schedule an appointment.
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Author: Jennifer Spencer, PhD, HSPP is the owner of Spencer Psychology, and a licensed psychologist with over 30 years of experience in mental health counseling in Bloomington IN. Spencer Psychology is committed to providing compassionate expert care in-person and by telehealth for Bloomington, the surrounding area and by telehealth for all of Indiana.