EMDR Therapy in Richmond, VT

EMDR

Trauma-Focused Therapy

EMDR therapy in Richmond, VT for trauma that won't stay in the past. I'm Amber, LCMHC, EMDR-trained, and I offer EMDR in person at The Village Collective and online across Vermont.

What EMDR is

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. In plain terms, it's a structured way of helping your brain finish processing an experience that got stuck. You focus briefly on a memory while following a back-and-forth movement, and over a series of sessions the memory loses its charge. You still remember what happened. It stops running your nervous system.

EMDR is used most often for trauma, and it's one of the better-studied approaches for it. It works for single events and for the slow, repeated kind of hurt that happened growing up.

Who I use EMDR with

Most of my EMDR work is with the two groups I see most. For new and expecting parents, that's often a frightening birth, a loss, or the way a pregnancy brought back something from their own childhood. For college students, it's usually family-of-origin material that surfaced once they left home.

I don't use EMDR with everyone, and I don't use it in the first session. We build enough steadiness first that the processing has somewhere safe to land.

Working Together

Cross-country ski EMDR sessions

In the winter months I offer cross-country ski sessions that integrate EMDR. Bilateral movement is a key processing component of EMDR, and skiing is a rhythmic, repetitive, left-right motion that can support reprocessing while you're outside and moving. It isn't for every client or every session, but for the right person it's a very different way to do this work. Ask me about it on the consult call.

What sessions look like

In our early sessions, we look at your history, your goals for therapy, and getting you settled in to the process. When we start EMDR proper, sessions follow a set structure and I'll walk you through it before we begin. Online EMDR works well and is how most of my clients do it; I'll show you how the bilateral part works over video. In person, I'm in Richmond one day a week.