Eye-movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a counseling approach to treating trauma.
EMDR can be a powerful tool in helping kids and teens process traumatic and distressing events in their life quickly and effectively.
EMDR is one of the most researched approaches to treating trauma that exists.
Understanding Trauma
Trauma can be thought of in two broad categories, Big-T, and Little-T traumas.
- Big-T traumas are the bigger life events that most people associate with trauma. Being involved in a bad car accident or experiencing some form of abuse are some examples.
- Little-T traumas can have just as big of an effect but can be overlooked. Examples of Little-T traumas could be name-calling, excessive teasing, witnessing family conflict and developing a negative view of yourself.
Both Big-T and Little-T traumas have a huge effect on our brains and how we function after the event(s). Unfortunately, we often brush Little-T traumas under the rug because we feel like we should be able to get over something like that on our own, or we just don’t realize the impact they have on our brains and the way we think. These Little-T traumas can have a profound impact on the way kids view themselves and the world around them.
How EMDR Can Help
EMDR recognizes the impact of both degrees of trauma and provides an approach to reprocess these events.
Sometimes, when bad things happen to us, they can get stuck, or stored, in the right side of our brains, which is where the emotion center of our brain is. These memories are stored as emotionally charged, reactive, and traumatic. The brain wasn’t able to process them with both sides online, which means that the cognitive, more rational side of your brain wasn’t involved in how your brain processed the traumatic event.
The goal of EMDR is to help your brain change this. This allows your brain to store the memory in a more adaptive way. It’s stored as simply a memory instead of an emotionally reactive memory.
Why EMDR is Ideal for Children and Teens
Our brains were created with an incredible ability to heal themselves. When something bad happens, our brains change. When it comes to healing from trauma, kids have something going for them that a lot of adults don’t. Since kids haven’t been on the earth as long, they haven’t been around to experience 30, 40, or 50 years of trauma.
Since they don’t have years of traumatic experiences built up, they’re often able to process through trauma more quickly than adults are. This is especially true when it comes to EMDR and makes EMDR an excellent approach when working with children.
In addition to addressing trauma, EMDR has been effective in treating anxiety, depression, phobias, and challenging behaviors in children as well.
What EMDR with Kids and Teens Looks Like
Walking through the steps of EMDR typically happens over numerous sessions. This process will look different with young children than it does when working with adults.
During the first sessions, your child will learn some different ways to help themselves regulate big emotions.
After they’ve learned some ways to help them regulate their emotions more effectively, we’ll work on identifying what things we’re going to process with EMDR. These can be traumatic memories or beliefs or thoughts that are causing anxious or depressive symptoms or other behavioral issues.
Once we’ve identified our target, we’ll move into the processing part of EMDR.
EMDR uses what’s called bilateral stimulation to help the brain reprocess things. This simply means activating both sides of the brain at the same time and kickstarts the brain’s natural healing process.
Bilateral stimulation can be carried out in a number of ways. With kids, this can be tapping on their hands or knees back and forth, having them hold “tappers” in their hands which buzz back and forth in their hands or even scribbling left to right on a page.
Ways To Help Your Child at Home
Here are a couple of things you can teach your kids (or even yourself!) at home to help them get started learning how to regulate their emotions more effectively!
- Square Breathing– This simple breathing technique is very powerful. Find a square, look at the bottom righthand corner, and as your eyes move up the side slowly you breathe in. As your eyes move across the top of the square, breathe out. As your eyes move down the other side, breathe in and as your eyes move back across the bottom, breathe out. Now have your child keep repeating the square until they’ve leveled out. This is a great activity to practice with them. And remember, the more they practice, the more effective it will be!
- Calm Place– Use of imagination can really help with emotion regulation. Have your child think of a place that seems calm, happy, fun, or any other engaging term you can think of. This can be as silly and off the wall as they want, as long as there’s nothing scary or negative! With younger kids, it can be really helpful for them to draw their place. Make sure they are in their place somewhere, and have them tell you how it feels to be in this place. Explain to them that this is a place they can go to anytime they want. They can close their eyes and imagine they are there whenever they start to feel scared, sad, anxious, or angry. Take a few moments each day to practice imagining they are in this place. When you notice they are having a tough day emotionally, remind them about their place and redirect them to spend some time there. As they practice, this will become an excellent resource for them!
Think EMDR may benefit your child or teen?
Treatment with EMDR requires specialized training. I’m a local Licensed Professional Counselor trained in EMDR and who specialized in working with kids, teens and families. If you think your child would benefit from EMDR, I would love to talk with you! You can give me a call at 512-651-1009 ext. 703 or email me, Seth Miller at seth@gtowncounseling.com.
