69: EMDR for Winter Holidays [Why EMDR Works Series]

The holiday season can be incredibly stressful and triggering for many reasons, from trying to defy our natural inclination to hibernate in the winter, to how our brains link to challenging events from all the holidays that came before.

But you don’t have to dread the holidays or family get-togethers, if you can understand where your feelings come from and how to work through them.

We store so many memories in our bodies; some of these memories we know and remember, but others happened before we can remember or realize that they were traumatic. Things like a parent not speaking up when another parent was drunk, changing schools, not being comforted when you were upset, being spanked, and more.

We can understand the whole of these many moments as part of attachment trauma. And when we see television shows, social media posts and advertisements about what a holiday should look and feel like, we feel like there’s something wrong with us or our families.

One solution is working on that attachment trauma with attachment-focused EMDR to help our nervous system desensitize those memories so you don’t have to go into the holidays already lit up with anxiety.

This week on the podcast, I’m sharing more about what this looks like in practice and why EMDR can help us develop a relational mirror to help us better understand ourselves.

When something traumatic happens to us, it can be healing to have a therapist listen to and/or validate our horrible experience, especially if no one else has before. However, rehashing the details of that traumatic event can be retraumatizing. Brain-based therapies like EMDR teach us that we don't have to talk about the trauma or the details if we don't want to because the real healing doesn't focus on the traumatic event itself.

The Zero Disturbance podcast is for educational purposes and is not a replacement for a therapeutic relationship or individualized mental health or medical care.

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With a Masters in Education from Vanderbilt, Kambria has been creating trainings and teaching adult learners for over 20 years. As the Director of Education and Quality Improvement at Stanford Medical School, she created ease in complex systems, thereby giving medical trainees successful learning experiences. Now, as a dedicated mom, therapist, and EMDR Consultant, Kambria knows what it means to do things efficiently, effectively, and in a learner-centered way. When she isn't podcasting or creating online courses, you can find Kambria playing with her twins on a beach in California.

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