When old experiences turn up in present relationships

A small disagreement leaves you wondering whether somebody is about to leave. You hold back what you need because saying it out loud feels risky. You want to be close to someone and then find yourself stepping back at exactly the moment they get near.

And then there is the layer after that, which is asking yourself why you reacted at all. You tell yourself you should know better by now. You are very probably a good deal kinder to the people around you than you are to yourself.

That is a reasonable place to start. You do not need a complete history or the right words for it first.

What you might want more room for

Saying what you need without rehearsing every possible response to it. Being present with a partner or a friend or your child instead of braced for something. Treating a bad day as a bad day rather than as evidence about you.

Those are goals worth naming. They are not outcomes I can guarantee, and anybody who guarantees them is telling you something they cannot know.

What EMDR is

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Put plainly, it aims to make remembering less distressing rather than to make you forget.

It is one of the recommended trauma focused treatments for PTSD. The strongest evidence is for PTSD, and its fit for anything else needs a specific conversation.

Usually it does not require telling the whole story out loud, although processing does involve bringing parts of a memory to mind. For a lot of people that distinction is the thing that makes it possible at all.

During that work I guide short sets of eye movements, sounds, or tapping, and we check in about what you notice. The exact mechanism is still under study. There are eight phases, and eight phases is not eight sessions.