Attachment-Informed EMDR helps uncover and heal the earlier experiences that may still be shaping how you feel, respond and connect – creating greater freedom in the way you experience yourself and your relationships.
Understanding the Roots of How You Feel Today
Attachment-Informed EMDR helps uncover and heal the earlier experiences that may still be shaping how you feel, respond and connect – creating greater freedom in the way you experience yourself and your relationships.
What Is Attachment-Informed EMDR?
Standard EMDR is a highly effective therapy for helping the brain process traumatic memories.
However, many people do not have one clearly identifiable traumatic event. However, many people do not have one clearly identifiable traumatic event. They may even look back on their childhood and think, “It really wasn’t that bad.”
Instead, they may notice the effects of earlier experiences in their lives today – perhaps feeling anxious or overwhelmed without knowing why, being particularly sensitive to rejection or criticism, finding relationships difficult, struggling to trust or set boundaries, feeling responsible for other people’s needs, or experiencing emotions that seem much stronger than the situation warrants.
Others describe feeling disconnected from themselves, not really knowing who they are or what they want, or repeating patterns they understand intellectually but somehow cannot change.
Trauma does not always come from something obviously catastrophic. Sometimes it develops through experiences that were simply too much, too often, or too difficult to manage without enough support. What matters is not only what happened, but how those experiences were felt and held by the nervous system.
Attachment-Informed EMDR builds upon the standard EMDR approach by recognising the lasting impact of these early developmental experiences. Rather than focusing only on individual memories, it helps us understand how those experiences continue to influence the way we relate to ourselves, others, and the world today.
Rather than beginning with a specific memory, we begin with what is challenging in your life right now.
Rather than seeing these reactions as signs that something is wrong with you, we see them as valuable clues.
Often, it is the ordinary moments of everyday life that feel the most confusing or distressing. A disagreement with your partner, receiving feedback at work, someone not replying to a message, or feeling left out may trigger emotions that seem overwhelming or difficult to understand. You may notice intense anxiety, shame, anger, or fear, together with physical sensations such as a tight chest, a knot in your stomach, or an urge to withdraw, please others, or defend yourself.
Many people begin to wonder whether something is wrong with them, or why they react so strongly to situations that seem relatively minor. In reality, these reactions are often triggered because something in the present has activated an earlier memory network. It can be as though an everyday experience acts like a password, unlocking old emotions, beliefs, and bodily responses that were formed much earlier in life.
Rather than seeing these reactions as signs that something is wrong with you, we see them as valuable clues. The clues can then be used to trace back to the earlier experiences that lie at the root of your current distress. Once these root memories have been identified, we use Attachment-Informed EMDR to process and integrate them. As these experiences are processed and gradually healed, the present-day triggers gradually lose their emotional intensity.