EMDR Therapy

EMDR Therapy: A Powerful, Effective Approach to Healing and Transformation

by Mihaela Ivan Holtz, Psy.D., LMFT

EMDR therapy (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) is a healing and transformative journey we use in Los Angeles, CA, that helps you reconnect with the fullness and wholeness of who you are. It reaches deep inside you to clear what stays in the way of you being connected to the core of who you are, your True Self. This can be from a traumatic event or any other occurrences that have happened in your life. It releases the unhealthy imprint, and it brings out the essence of who you are, so you can live with emotional freedom and authenticity in your love, creative expression, and sense of agency.

Your past experiences and unresolved emotions from traumatic memories can interfere with the sense of “emotional freedom” and hinder your ability to live with love, creativity, and productivity.

If you’re seeking a deep, lasting way to heal old emotional wounds or traumatic memories, EMDR Therapy, short for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, is an empirically validated and effective treatment plan.

My clients come to me because they are looking for an EMDR therapist who can help them transform the feelings, beliefs, and embodied emotional states that have been holding them back.

At the start of our work, people think and say things like:

• “I can’t be successful at…”
• “I don’t trust…”
• “my shame gets in the way when…”
• “rejection stops me from…”
• “guilt is not letting me…
• “I feel empty inside…”
• “my fears take over, and I can’t…”
• “I doubt that I can…”
• “I don’t have the self-confidence to…”
• “I am not worthy of…,”

This sort of negative thinking can hold you back from a fulfilled life. Through this effective treatment plan, clients’ feelings and beliefs begin to change to reflect a sense of healing, wholeness, and the kind of emotional freedom that allows them to live a rich life marked by creativity, accomplishment, and more authentic relationships.

Are old emotional wounds holding you back?

Maybe you have heard yourself say many of the things on that list. Maybe you haven’t been aware of your own inner dialogue, but you notice your life is not working. Your relationships, creativity, or sense of agency are suffering, and you’re seeking answers.

Perhaps you still feel the imprint of some traumatic event or traumatic memories that you have been unable to face and work through. You may have a history of emotional abuse, emotional neglect, being bullied, violence, or sexual abuse that you have been trying to cope with or just “get past.” Some people who have had these experiences can have panic attacks while going through their daily lives.

There is help. You can heal and live a full life!

Luckily, in recent decades, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) has proven to be a powerful psychotherapy approach that helps people find freedom from painful emotional states or traumatic memories that keep them from living their fulfilling lives. While EMDR is often the treatment of choice for those who suffered major traumas—such as wars, disasters, accidents, or assaults—it’s also a very effective treatment plan for healing childhood trauma, attachment issues, emotional conflicts, or any feelings -i.e., fears, doubts, insecurities that interfere with your ability to invest yourself and create your life. EMDR helps to resolve complex trauma that emerges from subtle and repeated instances of shame, humiliation, and rejection. All of these forms of trauma can manifest as anxiety, depression, panic attacks, relationship difficulties, self-esteem issues, performance anxiety, and creative blocks.

Do you need help resolving emotional trauma? Is EMDR Therapy in Los Angeles, CA, for you?

Many of our emotional struggles come from being stuck in a past experience that was particularly painful or traumatic. The tricky part is that you may not even be aware that you’re repeating the same old story over and over again.

Unprocessed, traumatic memories get stuck in your mind. When triggered, they can make you feel and act like you are back in the past. You respond to the present with the emotions and attitudes of your past self. This pattern keeps you stuck and gets in the way of your ability to grow and transform.

You may hear that you need to “live in the present” and “just have a positive mindset,” but this kind of well-intentioned advice can actually leave you feeling even more isolated and misunderstood.

Overcoming a traumatic event or painful experience isn’t as simple as choosing a new mindset. Fear, doubt, shame, and self-criticism can quickly take over. When you try to push through your emotions, you find yourself lost in anxiety, depression, relationship issues, performance anxiety, and creative blocks.

How does EMDR work?

EMDR Therapy (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy) is a revolutionary and effective treatment that incorporates bilateral stimulation (eye movements, tapping, or sounds) to help the brain process and integrate upsetting memories.

EMDR Therapy heals the pain and the disturbing memories connected to traumatic experiences. At the same time, it also frees you from challenging feelings and beliefs, distressing body sensations, and trapped emotions.

 Also, there is AF-EMDR Therapy, a form of EMDR that heals and repairs childhood-relational trauma – in adults with complicated childhood.  

What Is AF-EMDR Therapy? And How Does It Work?

Many trauma-related emotional problems benefit from a specifically adapted therapy model of EMDR called Attachment-Focused EMDR (AF-EMDR). If your trauma is relationally-based, you need AF-EMDR.

AF-EMDR is a targeted, research-supported, empirically validated form of traditional EMDR therapy. It combines the latest scientific insights and research on the neurobiology of relationships and psychotherapy with the EMDR treatment framework. This attachment-based modification of EMDR therapy is particularly helpful if you have childhood attachment trauma. It’s designed to treat relational trauma – emotional trauma due to unhealthy relationships – which is at the root of most emotional issues.

Perhaps traumatic childhood experiences here in Los Angeles, CA, interfere with your ability to form genuine relationships. Unprocessed, traumatic memories get stuck in your mind and, when triggered, take you back to an emotionally hurtful place in your mind. You cannot respond to the challenges of the present moment when you are busy reacting to these invisible memories from the past.

Maybe you’re experiencing performance anxiety, creative blocks, or problems in your career. Or you may be feeling depressed, anxious, or like you just don’t feel fully alive. You may not realize these symptoms are related to past experiences or trauma in your life. You are likely working with relational trauma.

AF-EMDR therapy helps you access these unprocessed emotions, which other forms of therapy often can’t tap into so fast and efficiently. Instead of just treating the symptoms or practicing mindfulness techniques, it addresses the root of your difficulties. AF-EMDR can break through the trauma and help you process it, creating healthier and more empowering emotional mind states.

For instance, if you lack self-esteem and you find it hard to trust your own abilities even though you’re very capable, an EMDR therapist can help you function with more confidence in who you really are. EMDR Therapy can help you reconnect to your unique mix of talent, gifts, and weaknesses.

EMDR doesn’t just reframe emotional pain. It actually heals your deep-rooted pain and connects you with a sense of grounded confidence in your true self so you can experience true growth.

As an EMDR therapist, I use a combination of proven therapy techniques based on the neurobiology of trauma, psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, mindfulness, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy), and psychoanalytic approaches along with EMDR.

With the help of EMDR, you’ll be able to finally step outside of the trauma box into emotional freedom.

You can’t change the past, but you change how you feel about it and hold it inside you. After treatment, you no longer live in an emotionally painful and conflicting place, you have access to who you really are to create your life.

When Trauma Blocks Access To Your Abilities and Talents and Limits Your Creative and Professional Potential

Trauma can affect people from all walks of life, but I often work with a unique group of individuals here in Los Angeles, CA, who tend to suffer from relational or developmental trauma: professionals in the creative arts, including performers, musicians, fine artists, and screenwriters.

As an artist, you navigate a high-pressure environment as you frequently deal with rejection, abandonment, and more. Unresolved traumatic memories and the limiting emotions and beliefs that come with them can diminish your creative potential and hinder your career.

One of my areas of expertise is in helping those in creative and artistic careers to move past complex emotional and developmental trauma. I’m particularly drawn to “true artists”—people who don’t see artistic expression as just a job but who see their art as the source of their life energy. They have to create to feel alive!

Throughout my 20-plus years of practicing psychotherapy, my deep appreciation for my clients’ creative energy has helped me to relate and connect with them on an intimate level so that they felt safe and comfortable bringing up anything they needed during treatment sessions.

By utilizing EMDR therapy, I’ve been able to help these clients reach a place where anxiety, depression, panic attacks, trauma, performance anxiety, and creative blocks no longer negatively affect their professional growth.

Time and again, I have walked beside creatives as they set off on their healing path. Once their trauma was processed in a healthy way, they could finally access their true selves. Thanks to our psychotherapy process, I see artists and performers become fully present in their lives, ready to showcase their abilities and talents in a renewed way. With a new sense of confidence, they step into greater career opportunities and success. I would like to help you do the same.

My Personalized Approach To EMDR Therapy

I always approach therapy with the intention of making it an in-depth, rich, emotional, relational experience that helps you thrive in the long term.  My expertise allows me to be timely and efficient and create healing and changes from the inside out.

As we attune to the specifics of your journey to healing and transformation, we identify what’s not working in your life, get to the root of the problem, and breakthrough what is keeping you stuck.

I’ve been trained in Attachment-Focused EMDR at the Parnell Institute, where I developed an appreciation for just how amazingly powerful the AF-EMDR therapy method is in trauma treatment. As I worked with a variety of clients, I was able to see first-hand that EMDR can even help those people who were getting stuck when using other modalities.

And I realized that EMDR gives me the ability to add an extra layer to my treatment, to help my clients even faster and more effectively, along with my previously established psychotherapy approaches.

In our sessions, I may blend EMDR with other psychotherapy approaches, such as talk therapy. Most likely, we will merge the more “traditional” therapeutic approach with EMDR throughout the therapy journey, depending on your needs and goals in the treatment.

Additional approaches that we may use in session—such as psychodynamic/psychoanalytic and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques—are all based on the neuroscience of psychotherapy. I found that these modalities can work very powerfully together with EMDR.

Psychotherapy is a science, an art, and a craft, all at the same time.

Find Lasting Healing From Trauma

If you’re ready to break free from the limitations of trauma and live with emotional freedom, please contact me to find out what EMDR therapy in person near Los Angeles, CA, or EMDR therapy online is appropriate for you.