EMDR for Accident Trauma
Trauma therapy in person in Wichita & online across Kansas
Accident & Disaster Trauma Recovery
Life isn’t always predictable: a normal day can suddenly become a before/after moment that haunts you long afterward. Anything that suddenly endangered your life or someone’s life near you (a vehicle accident, a workplace injury, a sporting event that turned catastrophic, a natural disaster that destroyed your home, etc) can produce significant, ongoing symptoms. The symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are usually divided into four categories as follows:
intrusive memories (flashbacks, nightmares, fear, triggers)
avoidance (staying away from reminders of people/places/situations)
negative feelings and beliefs (feelings of betrayal, self-blame, lost confidence, struggling to trust)
a nervous system in overdrive (panic attacks, insomnia, trouble concentrating, numbness)
If reading that list felt like an aha moment, consider whether therapy might be a helpful piece of healing from that trauma.
One of the treatments available for trauma is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). It’s a mouthful of a name - don’t feel bad if you can’t keep the acronym straight because lots of people can’t - but it’s a therapy backed by research that a lot of people have found helpful for accident trauma in recent decades. You can read more about what EMDR is like here, and more about finding an EMDR therapist here.
For now, though, know that EMDR includes treatment protocols that can address a trauma that just happened or a trauma that happened a long time ago. No matter when the accident happened, you can seek help in resolving the symptoms!
What is EMDR Like?
EMDR has 8 stages of treatment that can begin at your very first appointment - you will be doing EMDR long before you get to the eye movements part. Good therapy doesn’t go faster than you have capacity for, so the preliminary stages of assessment, building skills, and preparing to clear the trauma may take weeks or occasionally even months. The goal of therapy is to help you get better, not to overwhelm you with too much, too fast!
But once at the stage of eye movements the work can sometimes progress quite quickly. We’ll select the part(s) of the accident that are bothering you the most, figure out some practical mechanics (do you like eye movements, or would you rather use hand tappers or some other form of bilateral stimulation?), then dive in. You’ll complete brief sets of bilateral stimulation while holding the selected memory+sensations+emotions in mind. We'll pause at intervals, and I’ll ask what you're noticing. Usually, I'll suggest you “just notice that” in response and we'll go right back into bilateral movements. The value of EMDR is not in you telling me what you noticed between sets so much as it is what happens inside your brain and body while doing those sets of bilateral stimulation. It is even possible to successfully process a memory without telling me much about it - EMDR relies heavily on the brain’s innate impulse toward healing. Just like your body heals a cut with the support of an antibiotic ointment and occasionally stitches, your brain wants to heal trauma. EMDR is just a support and a framework that helps your brain find the resolution it’s searching for.
The body moves toward healing with support, and so does the brain after trauma
How Long Does EMDR Take?
How long EMDR takes depends both on your prior life experiences and on the severity of the accident. It’s not possible to predict exactly how long EMDR will take because we don't know in advance exactly what all the brain may have tied to that trauma - it may be brief or long to treat.
On the brief end of the spectrum, a simple accident may find significant resolution through weekly EMDR therapy in as little as six sessions!
On the end of the spectrum, a trauma that is deeply connected to chronic experiences of harm - institutional or relational abuse, for example - may be more complex and take many sessions to resolve. Similarly, a life that has already held many traumatic experiences may have left your nervous system in need of a slower pace to keep you from becoming overwhelmed. If you think this may be relevant to you, consider whether a more somatic approach to therapy may be a good starting point before engaging in EMDR.
Therapy for Accident Trauma in Wichita, KS
If you’re in Kansas and an accident in your recent or distant past seems to still be reverberating in your daily life, you can read more about me here and schedule your free consultation here. I offer free consultations to all new clients so you can enter therapy confident that you’re in the right place for the work you want to do. That heavy experience that is following you around right now can become a memory that no longer carries distress with it - reach out today to explore if EMDR might be a good treatment for accident or disaster trauma for you!
Elizabeth Peters, LMSW is a licensed therapist seeing clients in person in Wichita and online across Kansas. She provides EMDR and somatic therapy for adults who are overwhelmed by anxiety, painful relationships, spiritual harm, and trauma.