EMDR Therapy Explained: Healing Birth Trauma, NICU Trauma and PTSD

Hello

and

welcome to the NICU Space Podcast.

So today we're doing a little bit of a dive into what EMDR is.

So eye movement desensitization reprocessing, which is an absolute mouth down, mouth full.

But what I wanted to do today was bring on someone who specializes in talking about EMDR.

So Carly Costello is a licensed therapist.

She's an EMDR certified therapist, and she's an approved consultant based in West Virginia in the US.

She's the owner of the Counseling Nook, which is a group therapy practice, which specializes in trauma-informed care, where all of the clinicians are trained in EMDR therapy.

She's got a consulting business called EMDR with Carly, and she provides consultation, mentorship, training for EMDR therapists.

But the reason why I wanted to have her on today is because I feel like she's got a really accessible way of talking about EMDR.

So it's not jargon filled.

It's really clear.

She's on Instagram and she does reels where she talks about EMDR, what it means.

really helps people to understand what it's about.

So I am also an EMDR therapist myself, and it is one of the main ways that I work with people in therapy.

And there are often questions that we get around things like, I'm worried that if I open this box, then it's going to spill over and I don't want to open Pandora's box or people worry about doing it wrong.

Or there's misconceptions about it or myths about doing EMDR.

Like, for example, we can't do EMDR when we're pregnant.

Or what actually is it? You know, people talk about EMDR, but what is it? Who is it for? How does it work? So that's what we're breaking down today, talking a little bit about each of those things.

And I think it's a really important conversation because so many people can benefit from it.

EMDR.

It's a type of trauma processing therapy.

And I guess the way that I like to think of it is it just helps stuff that feels stuck get unstuck.

So whether that is emotions that feel like they're too big and they keep repeating or whether it is negative beliefs about things like it's my fault or I'm not safe or my kid's not safe, for example, or maybe it's that you're flashing back to memories and that keeps repeating itself.