EMDR Therapy for Trauma Recovery in BC
Begin Your Journey to Healing
Find Stability, Healing, and Lasting Relief from Trauma using EMDR
Trauma can be a life-altering experience, often leaving individuals feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or detached. It’s not just about a single event or prolonged events; it's about the deep impact those events have on your mind and body. Through EMDR, these experiences are gently reprocessed so the brain can make sense of them in a more adaptive way. Rather than teaching you to control or suppress reactions, EMDR helps your brain and nervous system naturally regulate by resolving what has been keeping them stuck in survival mode. Over time, many people feel more grounded, calm, and able to respond to daily life with greater ease and clarity.
Understanding Trauma and How It
Affects You
Trauma isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a natural human response to overwhelming stress that exceeds your capacity to cope. It affects the nervous system and can lead to chronic states of activation—such as fight (anger, irritability, or frustration), flight (anxiety, restlessness, or avoidance), or freeze (shutdown, numbness, or feeling stuck). These responses are the brain and body’s way of trying to protect you in the face of overwhelming experiences.
You may have experienced trauma if you currently find yourself:
Struggling with Stress: Feeling constantly on edge, easily startled, or suffering from persistent stress and anxiety.
Disconnected Feeling numb, detached from your body or surroundings, or avoiding people and places.
Overwhelmed by Emotions: Experiencing rapid shifts between intense anger, sadness, or deep depression.
Responding to Triggers: Reacting strongly to reminders of the past (known as triggers) with fight, flight, or freeze responses.
Reliving the Past: Having intense flashbacks or nightmares that feel very real.
“When trauma gets triggered, you don’t act your age,
you act the age the wound was created.”
~ Dr. Gabor Maté
It's Not Just How 'Big' the Event Was
In the context of EMDR therapy, trauma is defined by the impact the event had on you, not how severe it looked to others. Trauma often refers to experiences that overwhelmed your nervous system and prevented your mind from processing them fully at the time. As a result, these experiences can leave lasting effects, such as intense emotions, intrusive thoughts, physical tension, or patterns of avoidance and staying on high alert that continue to influence your daily life.
Different types of trauma:
Single-Event Trauma: Accidents, natural disasters, assaults, or sudden losses.
Complex or Relational Trauma: Ongoing experiences like childhood emotional neglect, consistent criticism, inconsistent care, or chronic, high-stress environments.
Relational (Attachment) Trauma: Trauma that occurs within important relationships, often in childhood, such as emotional neglect, inconsistent care, or abuse, which can affect trust, safety, and emotional connection.
Developmental Trauma: Trauma experienced during critical periods of growth, often in childhood, that impacts emotional, cognitive, and social development.
Secondary or Vicarious Trauma: Emotional impact from being exposed to someone else’s trauma, often experienced by caregivers, therapists, or first responders.
These unprocessed memories can leave "emotional splinters" in your mind and body. Online EMDR therapy acts to gently remove these splinters, allowing the wound to finally heal and the symptoms—whether they manifest as anxiety, depression, or anger—to dissipate. This specialized approach is what makes EMDR highly effective for clients who feel they have been stuck, stalled, or unchanged despite previous counselling.
How Trauma Leads to System Dysregulation
System dysregulation refers to a state where the nervous system has difficulty returning to balance after stress, threat, or overwhelming experiences. From a counselling and EMDR perspective, it means the brain and body are no longer responding only to what’s happening now, but are reacting based on past experiences that haven’t been fully processed. This is often referred to as being “triggered”.
System dysregulation affects multiple areas at once:
Emotional: intense emotions, sudden mood shifts, difficulty calming down
Cognitive: racing thoughts, overthinking, negative self-beliefs, mental fog
Somatic (body-based): tension, tightness, restlessness, fatigue, or a sense of being on edge
In EMDR therapy, dysregulation is understood not as a problem to control, but as a sign of unprocessed experiences stored in the nervous system. These experiences can include single traumatic events, ongoing stress, or attachment wounds from early relationships. When memories remain unprocessed, they continue to trigger the nervous system as if the original threat is still present.
Learn More About Trauma and the Benefits of EMDR
Please click on the video for a visual explanation of trauma & EMDR.
“Trauma is an invisible force that shapes our lives. It shapes the way
we live, the way we love and the way we make sense of the world.
It is the root of our deepest wounds.”
~ Dr. Gabor Maté
The Benefits of Healing Trauma with EMDR Therapy: Find Balance and Resilience in Your Daily Life
EMDR therapy offers a safe, structured path to move beyond survival mode and reclaim your life. It is focused on processing the past without re-traumatizing you.
EMDR works at the root of trauma and can help you:
Regulate Your Nervous System: Your mind and body can move out of persistent fight, flight, or freeze states, allowing your nervous system to settle, calm, and function more naturally.
Decrease Anxiety and Anger: Reduce the intensity and frequency of overwhelming emotions like constant worry, panic, and sudden bursts of anger.
Address Root Causes: Gently explore and process the memories that created the trauma response, addressing deep-seated attachment wounds.
Improve Relationships: Break free from patterns of avoidance or hyper-vigilance, leading to healthier and more fulfilling connections.
Find Lasting Clarity: Move past feeling "stuck" and develop a grounded sense of self and well-being, leading to greater resilience.
Rather than forcing control over symptoms, EMDR works with your nervous system to restore natural regulation and a sense of safety.
“Healing doesn’t erase the past—it removes its grip on the present.”
~ Unknown
Taking the Next Step for Healing Trauma with
Online EMDR Therapy in British Columbia
Healing from trauma is one of the most courageous things you can do. Our secure, confidential online sessions allow you to engage in deep therapeutic work from the comfort of your own space, making consistent attendance and emotional safety easier to maintain.
Connect with me through a complimentary 15-minute phone consultation.