EMDR Therapy

Online therapy for Arizona, Colorado, Florida, and New Mexico residents, with licensed therapist in Tucson, Jacob Gotwals, MA.

Have you had traumatic experiences that have left you with intrusive memories, flashbacks, nightmares, or emotional distress? EMDR therapy can help heal psychological trauma.
Have you been suffering from phobias or irrational fears? EMDR therapy can help you process and desensitize these fears.
Do you have an insecure (anxious, avoidant, or disorganized) attachment style? EMDR therapy can help you reprocess and heal from difficult childhood experiences that contribute to this insecurity.
Have you been experiencing grief? EMDR therapy can help you process unresolved grief, helping you heal and adapt to new life circumstances.
Do you have low self-esteem? EMDR can help you reprocess negative beliefs and memories of difficult experiences that may be contributing to low self-worth and self-criticism.

EMDR therapy can help you heal and grow.

During EMDR therapy, I will guide you through a healing process of focusing on distressing memories, beliefs, and emotions while experiencing bilateral stimulation (stimulation that goes back and forth from one side of your body to the other). Through repeated sets of bilateral stimulation, EMDR can reduce the emotional distress associated with traumatic memories, allowing you to experience them with less emotional intensity. EMDR can also help your mind reprocess traumatic memories, making new connections and associations.

Experience more wellbeing.

As distressing experiences are reprocessed during EMDR therapy, you may experience a sense of resolution and closure. The experiences become integrated in a way that allows for greater understanding, acceptance, and emotional healing. EMDR can also help you identify and challenge negative beliefs or interpretations associated with these experiences, creating positive changes in your thoughts and perceptions.

How I Can Help

I’ll start by talking with you to understand the issues you've been facing and your goals for therapy, then we’ll use EMDR therapy to start addressing your issues.

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Frequently Asked Questions

A traumatic experience could be a single overwhelming or life-threatening event (like an accident, injury, disaster, or loss of a loved one) or repeated or ongoing stressful events or situations (as in abuse, neglect, bullying, discrimination, or childhood adversity).
When you go through a traumatic experience, your mind’s ability to process the experience gets overwhelmed, leaving you with a traumatic memory. The difference between traumatic memories and ordinary memories is that traumatic memories can be intrusive, coming up unexpectedly and repeatedly; they can be emotionally intense, bringing up emotions like fear, helplessness, or horror; and they can be fragmented, making it harder to remember a coherent story of what happened. Traumatic memories can also trigger strong physical reactions like increased heart rate, sweating, or panic, which can interfere with your ability to function; these physical reactions can lead to avoidance, hypervigilance, and difficulty concentrating or sleeping.
EMDR was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy. (Originally, EMDR therapists used back-and-forth eye movements for bilateral stimulation, but now we know that other techniques, such as self-tapping, can also be effective.)
Bilateral stimulation (stimulation that goes back and forth from one side of your body to the other) helps create the right conditions for your mind to heal and reprocess traumatic memories. There are a number of theories about why this works; this is still being researched.
Many research studies have demonstrated that EMDR can be effective in reducing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma-related conditions. EMDR was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s, and is recognized as an evidence-based treatment for PTSD by organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
I’m proud to be certified as an EMDR therapist by the EMDR International Association.