Dr. Karma Guindon & Associates
DBR & EMDR
Finding Inspiration in Every Turn
Because of recent advances in brain research, we are in the golden era of understnading the impact of positive and negatives expereinces on the brain, and the root causes of mental illness, addiction, relationship problems, and chronic difficulties with everyday living.
EMDR and DBR are two therapies that have arisen from these advances.
EMDR
EMDR is an evidence-basted therapy that helps people change how their brain responds to stress, trauma, or emotional challenges. It works at the level of neural networks to help the brain ??
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EMDR consists of distinct phases that include assessment, grounding and distress management skills, processing memories, and evaluating changes and progress. During the processing phase the client is asked to focus on a specific event, thought, image or memory. You will identify the most vivid visual image related to it (if available), an associated negative belief, related emotions, and body sensations. the client is then asked to hold these in their mind while the therapist ask the client to follow their fingers as they sway them left and right, or other back and forth stimulation (such as butterfly hug, tapping one knw then the other, sounds that ??from the left ear to right ear).
This occurs in sets that last few minutes at a time. During each break between set, the therapist checks in and asks the client what they are noticing and then the therapists sugesses that they 'go with that' or focus on a particular aspect of it. This is repeated until the client now longer feels distress in relation to that memory. Then positive and preferred beliefs that have emerged organically or during the preparation phase are installed, using the same back and forth method mentioned above. ‘After several sets of this, clients generally report increased confidence in this positive belief. The therapist then asks the client about their body sensations, and ff there are negative sensations associated with the memory, these are processed in the same way.
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Throughout the process, the client is awake, alert, and in control at all times. This is not hypnosis - no trance state is induced, no suggestions are made, and the changes that occur are the result of the brain's natural healing functions. And the client can stop at any time.
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During this time, you have full control to stop the therapist at any point if needed, but you’ll continue until the event becomes less disturbing. ‘The inappropriate emotions, beliefs, and body sensations will be discarded. Negative emotions, feelings and behaviours are generally caused by unresolved earlier experiences that are pushing you in the wrong directions. The goal of EMDR therapy is to leave you with the emotions, understanding, and perspectives that will lead to healthy and useful behaviours and interactions.’
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DBR
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is an evidence-basted therapy that helps people change how their brain responds to stress, trauma, or emotional challenges.
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What happens during a processing session? The therapist and client select either an aspect of a past traumatic event or a present-day trigger (called an "activating stimulus"). Once this is decided, the therapists then guides the cleint in a grounding practice so that they are as present-oriented as possible. Next, the thearpist asks the client to attend to the activating stimulus, and while doing this to notice and become aware of physical sensations - called orienting tension—in their forehead, around the eyes, and the back of the neck. This serves as an anchor for processing that the client can return to if needed. Next, the client is guided to notice and be with different sensations that are associated with shock, if they arise. Shock sensations are produced, again by a structure in the brainstem called the locus coeruleus) in response to an overwhelming threat from the environment. In people who have expereicned past overwhelmingly distressing events or trauma, these sesnsations become stuck and can continue to arise even though their lives are now safe and relatively predictable. These shock sensations are often fleeting and occur before sensations associated with emotions (such as panic/fear, rage, and sadness) and associed actions (such as freeze, flee, fight, please, attach, or collapse). Slowing down these cascades of survival responses produced by the midbrain in face of uncertainty and threat so that the client can track them, tolerte them, "be" with them a regulated stated seems to allow the body to recognize that 'things are different' now and to clear these stuck ptterns of phsyciologicl responding. Since everyting cascases up from the brainstem, clients not only experine more calm in their bodies, they are also able to think differently when something ctivating happens, feel less distress about it, and responde more efffectively. Many of our clients report...., being with them in a regulated stated, and Being with and patients often experience a decrease in levels of shock and distress, accompanied by emotional release and psychological and physical relief.
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