EMDR Therapy by a LGBTQIA+ Counsellor in Melbourne

*Read time: 3 minutes

Trauma can have a devasting effect on your life and leave you feeling deflated and hopeless, shaping the way you think about yourself, your relationships and the world around you.

There are unique traumas the LGBTQIA+ community experiences and LGBTIQIA+ counsellors, psychologists and therapists with lived experience of their own can help you see how specific traumatic experiences are impacting you in your day to day life.

Feeling stuck and unsure how to heal from past trauma?

Perhaps you’ve tried a bunch of different therapies, and still feel distressed by specific memories that come up even when you try your best to push them out of your mind? EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing could be right for you.

Over the past 2 years I have seen the healing impact of EMDR therapy in my counselling room.

What is EMDR therapy?

EMDR is a memory-processing therapy which helps you process painful memories that are still causing you distress in the present. Following processing, you retain the memories, but with greatly reduced pain and distress associated with them.

Before engaging in EMDR therapy, it's normal to have a bunch of questions and concerns as to whether it's going to work for you. By the end of this post, you will have clarity on whether EMDR therapy might be right for you.

What to Expect in EMDR Therapy

In the planning phases, your EMDR therapist will work with you to identify your goals, build a trusting relationship and develop self-soothing strategies.

For complex trauma with multiple distressing memories attached, your therapist will create a timeline of the key moments of distress with you to direct future processing sessions.

During processing, your therapist will activate the memory you have agreed to work on and ask you to follow their fingers with your eyes. This eye movement creates dual awareness splitting your attention between the trauma memory and the demand of following the therapist's fingers with your eyes.

With the guidance of your therapist, feelings will peak in intensity and then fade until all the associated negative feelings have settled and more positive feelings start to emerge.

During this phase, clients tend to say things like, ‘I feel safe now’, ‘it wasn't my fault’, ‘I feel compassion for myself’, and ‘it’s in the past’.

Your EMDR Therapist will then help you identify a positive belief to pair with the memory for when it comes up in the future; for example, 'I'm okay as I am' is a common positive belief LGBTQIA+ clients use for shame-based memories.

How will I know if EMDR therapy has worked?

Following your EMDR session, your therapist will check in with you to see if the distress associated with the memory continues to be a Zero out of Ten; if this is the case, you will move on to the next memory that requires processing. If distress remains, the process can be repeated where necessary.

When EMDR therapy has been effective you will have a sense that the memory is in the past, and no longer bothers you. Your EMDR therapist will review your goals to see if the changes you were hoping to see are beginning to emerge.

Why work with an LGBTQIA-affirming EMDR practitioner?

A practitioner with lived LGBTQIA+ experience will have a particular radar for common traumas people in the community experience.

For example, keeping your sexuality secret is often a period of aloneness and overwhelm, which is traumatic for most adolescents.

So too is the period after coming out where few parents or care givers acknowledge the difficult experiences the queer person has been through to get to a point of coming out, compounding the negative feelings.

The reality is that non LGBTQIA+ practitioners are less likely to factor in these types of queer experiences into your timeline.

Conclusion

When it comes to processing our trauma a sense of stuckness, overwhelm and avoidance is to be expected.

You try to push away your traumatic memories but you continue to feel stuck and overwhelmed, with a reduced quality of life.

If this feels like something you can relate to, EMDR might be right for you. Letting a trusted friend know how you’re feeling and that you’re considering EMDR can be a good way of creating some momentum towards getting professional help.

Next Steps

If you feel ready to take the next steps on your healing journey, book a free 15-minute consult so we can discuss how EMDR therapy might work for you. 

I look forward to hearing from you.