Lancaster, Pennsylvania EMDR Attachment Trauma

Lancaster, PA: Attachment Trauma – How EMDR helps when you’re feeling insecure

Attachment trauma can happen to anyone any time, but it occurs more often in childhood, sometimes as a preverbal infant, when a child is neglected, abandoned, or abused. This creates a feeling in every relationship the person gets into that there’s instability. Attachment trauma is often part of complex PTSD that manifests itself in unhealthy relationships, constant fear of abandonment, and a lot of stress. 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a profound, and profoundly simple, method for treating emotional trauma. This psychotherapy has been researched extensively and shown to be safe and effective for helping the mind heal from trauma. 

Using EMDR, a trained therapist helps to reduce the impact of attachment trauma. EMDR therapy is non-invasive, easy to do, and has very few side effects. 

How does Attachment Trauma happen?

Attachment traumas are scars left in the mind and psyche of a person that they often don’t know are there or understand how they happened. 

For example, a woman who moves from one toxic relationship to the next might have attachment traumas, she’s not even conscious of. Even when healthy affection is offered, she might not be able to recognize it or accept it. A man who falls in love with all his heart every time someone shows him any attention might have an attachment trauma that’s left him unable to distinguish healthy attachments from unhealthy ones. 

Attachment trauma occurs when a relationship that requires trust is broken. A parent who beats or neglects their child. A teacher who betrays the child’s trust. A sibling, who should be a source of strength and love, turns into a daily terror in the child’s life. 

How EMDR Works

In EMDR, the therapist uses bi-lateral stimulation, meaning stimulation of both sides of the body. This might include lateral eye movements, ear tones, and/or taps on the hands to open the mind to reprogramming. While this is happening, the client is accessing memories associated with their trauma, like images, cognitions, and sensations. Using a specific eight-step protocol, the therapist guides the client to desensitization toward the trauma, taking the power of out traumas that often affect the client’s life in subtle and insidious ways. 

EMDR has been shown to be amazingly effective at treating PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), a disorder often related to attachment trauma, that can lead to depression, anxiety, and even suicide. 

Does EMDR work for Attachment Trauma?

"The case study and literature review provide preliminary evidence that EMDR may be a promising therapy in the treatment of disorders related to attachment trauma.” - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1053.5314&rep=rep1&type=pdf

While everyone in the industry will tell you there needs to be a lot more study, there’s a lot of evidence, both clinical and anecdotal, that EMDR is an effective therapy for attachment trauma. The best part is that it has few side effects, especially as compared to pharmaceutical solutions. 

In our practice and thousands of others around the world, we’ve seen that EMDR is a highly effective treatment for attachment trauma and many of the traumas associated with it. Since it has few side effects and often delivers results in only a few sessions, it’s worth a try for anyone having negative relationship experiences.