Understanding EMDR with Tammy Valicenti
Tammy Valicenti has 20 years experience working as an EMDR practitioner and in that time she has become an expert in trauma and addiction recovery. Over her two decades of experience she has helped bring about life changing results for survivors of rape, sexual assault, and those suffering with PTSD using her EMDR techniques, and is now sharing them with more people to help them on their healing journeys as well. Valicenti has always felt that healing those in need was a calling for her.
So, What is EMDR?
EMDR stands for “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing”, and acts as a holistic approach to traditional therapy. EMDR combines thoughts, memories, emotions, sensations, and the negative thoughts about yourself.
First conceived of by Francis Shapiro, who discovered that when she moved her eyes back and forth in her head the material she was thinking about became less disturbing. Similarly to how we process our thoughts in REM sleep (dreaming). This is the natural way the brain processes and stores information. Valicenti explains how we can use bilateral stimulation to give the same effect of grounding and processing our thoughts. Valicenti explains how trauma is not stored in the same way our thoughts are, she uses the analogy that it is ‘Floating on top of everything’. Meaning that those suffering from trauma are ‘experiencing and reliving these traumas everyday’. By utilizing a form of therapy that allows us to process our traumas it helps to ground and store this information.
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