EMDR therapy | ConnecticuT
Therapy with Laura.
Insight becomes embodied = more feeling like yourself
Your mind gets it.
The rest of you is waiting for permission to follow.
You have spent years gathering insight.
You can name your patterns.
You know the why behind them.
But still, in the middle of a reaction, you find yourself thinking: I know exactly why I do this. So why is it still happening?
This is where therapy becomes less about explaining and more about updating.
The symptoms that bring you into therapy aren't failures. They're strategies. Often we talk about these as different "parts" of you that developed instinctively to help you cope, stay safe, or stay connected.
At some point, these patterns did their job. They were intelligent adaptations.
Now they may feel exhausting.
We don’t shame them. We don’t fight them.
We look at what they were doing for you.
Then we update them.
Let’s talk about the past-present connection.
Most of what keeps you stuck now started making sense a long time ago.
Maybe it's experiences from childhood.
Maybe it's a relationship that changed you.
Maybe it's something more recent that your system hasn't fully metabolized yet.
We'll help your nervous system release what still feels raw.
The result?
You start responding to the life you're actually living, not the one that shaped you.
How this therapy is different.
We will absolutely talk about what’s happening in your life right now.
We’ll slow it down.
We’ll make sense of it.
We just won’t stop at understanding.
Insight matters. Problem-solving matters. They create a foundation.
But we also need to work on the level where the reactions live.
This is the level where EMDR works. Not by revisiting the past in great detail, but by helping your nervous system process what it's still carrying.
You can read more about how EMDR works on the anxiety and burnout and trauma pages.
What change feels like.
Sometimes it’s one big moment, but often times it’s quieter than that. A cascade of small things that tell you something is actually moving.
You start talking to yourself differently.
You stop and notice when the old voice shows up.
That pause is where everything changes.
You start speaking up. Not from defensiveness or years of swallowed resentment finally boiling over, but from a place of quiet clarity.
You say no.
You negotiate differently.
You stop working so hard to manage other people's feelings and reactions.
You start letting people actually see you.
The tight chest shows up less.
The labored breathing softens.
You sit differently.
There's more ease in the room and more laughter than there used to be.
Energy that was going toward managing, monitoring, and bracing starts going toward what actually matters to you. And you feel less apologetic about that.
Life doesn't become rainbows and puppies.
Hard things still happen.
But they stop sending you into a full speed tailspin.
And if the tailspin starts, you can pause.
You can redirect.
You find your way back to yourself faster than you used to.
That's how you know it's working.
Not always one breakthrough.
Just a quieter, steadier version of you, starting to feel more like yourself again.
This approach to therapy may be for you if:
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You understand your patterns but still feel stuck in them
You've done helpful work in therapy before and feel ready to go further
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There's a stuck feeling you can't quite explain, but you know it's holding you back
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You keep second-guessing yourself or replaying old decisions on a loop
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You're exhausted from holding it together while still feeling unsettled inside
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FAQs:
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Nope! EMDR is not only for people who identify with having trauma or a difficult childhood.
EMDR is effective for the quieter wounds too: the patterns that formed in families that were loving but imperfect, the experiences that were never quite processed, the chronic stress that accumulated over years. You don't need a single defining moment. You need experiences that are still shaping how you move through the world today. -
Probably not! If you've done meaningful talk therapy, you likely have strong insight already and that's actually an asset here. This work starts where insight leaves off. We're not going to spend sessions building understanding you already have. We're going to work with what understanding alone hasn't been able to shift and help your nervous system integrate for embodied relief.
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We build resources before we go anywhere difficult. Part of the early work is making sure you have what you need to stay grounded. We move at a pace your nervous system can tolerate. If something feels like too much, we slow down or stop. You always have a voice and a choice in what happens in session.
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It depends on what you're carrying and what you're hoping to shift. Some people do focused work over a few months. Others work with me longer. What I can tell you is that we're not going to loop indefinitely. The work has direction, and we'll check in regularly to make sure it's moving.
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Nope! EMDR doesn't require you to narrate your experiences at length. We work with what's present. Sometimes that’s a feeling, an image, a body sensation, rather than a detailed account of what happened. For many people this is a relief and can be helpful if it is hard to pinpoint one singular experience that is contributing to your symptoms.
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I welcome collaboration with fellow practitioners ! If you have a client who might benefit from doing adjunctive EMDR work, I'm happy to discuss whether my approach would be a good fit. You can reach out directly through my contact page.
I offer consultation calls with referring practitioners to discuss treatment approaches and coordinate care when helpful.
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I offer both online and in person sessions. In person sessions are conducted at my office which is in a private, comfortable setting in historic New Britain, right across from Walnut Hill Park and the Museum of American Art.
