Do you feel empty inside despite achieving all your career goals, ticking off the most items on your bucket list, achieving life’s milestones, and more? Does the fear of failure keep you from
trying, making decisions, or taking risks despite being an expert in your field? You are not alone. Success feels like an elusive dream for many people. Even with all the achievements, accolades, and prestige, a sense of purpose is not always a guarantee.
Besides success, that unshakable ‘stuck’ feeling manifests in various ways for high-functioning women. It could be persistent demotivation, diminishing passion for goals and objectives, lack of progress despite working hard, a sense of unmet potential, overthinking, or analysis paralysis. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) can resolve those vague inadequacy sensations, feelings of unfulfillment, fear of failure, and chronic indecision.
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR is a psychotherapy that helps individuals process emotional memories. It uses two techniques: bilateral stimulation and focusing on the problematic memory. Both approaches
correct faults in fragmented memories, reduce the intensity of the resulting emotional reaction, and improve one’s response to adaptive cognitive and behavioral habits.
High-functioning women find it hard to make decisions or act because they are way into their heads with worry or fear. Decision paralysis is demotivating. It breeds the imposter syndrome or
can morph into learned helplessness. EMDR therapy helps the brain process stuck or distressing memories, thoughts, and emotions, enabling a high-functioning individual to resolve their negative beliefs, undress underlying fears, overcome analysis paralysis, and function despite their fear of failure.
The Science Behind EMDR Therapy
The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model is the science behind EMDR therapy. It postulates how the brain processes memories and why EMDR therapy is the perfect solution. According to the AIP model, in a stressful state, the hippocampus, the brain part that forms cohesive emotional memory, develops memory fragments and stores them as encapsulated memory networks.
The isolated memory networks disrupt short-term and long-term memory recollection and enhance your sensitivity to similar distressing emotions. The hippocampus does not work alone. It coordinates with the prefrontal cortex and amygdala in memory integration and processing.
The amygdala, the brain’s stress processing center, activates in response to fear, stress, or threats. It processes the distress signals as emotional memories and sends them to the hippocampus, which encodes emotional memory by adding contextual cues like sight, sound, or touch. The hippocampus also consolidates emotional memory, changing it from short-term to long-term memory.
However, chronic stress interferes with the encoding and consolidation process, generating disjointed memory fragments that glitch during recollection. The prefrontal cortex retrieves emotional memory from the hippocampus for higher cognitive processing. Part of this entails toning, which labels the memory as pleasant or unpleasant, as well as memory rearrangement and transformation.
Unfortunately, disjointed emotional memories with jumbled cues evoke a faulty response from the prefrontal cortex, explaining sudden feelings of doom and gloom, insufficiency, emptiness, or difficulty finding a breakthrough angle in one’s line of work.
How Does EMDR Therapy Help High-Functioning Women Overcome Feeling Stuck?
EMDR uses two techniques. The first is bilateral stimulation and the second is focusing on a particular distressing memory to enable the hippocampus to reframe the memory correctly.
Bilateral Stimulation
Bilateral stimulation entails using sensory inputs from the left to the right side of the body to activate both brain parts. The therapist uses various techniques, such as:
● Eye Movements – the eyes follow the therapist’s finger as it moves from left to right
● Tactile stimulation – involves alternating taps on hands or knees.
● Auditory stimulation – entails using rhythm or tempo from the left to the right ear.
Focusing on A memory
The therapist will ask you to focus on one particular distressing memory while they employ the bilateral stimulation technique.
Cognitive Reframing
EMDR techniques facilitate the hippocampus in processing fragmented memories, allowing them to integrate into healthy memory networks. Simultaneously, these techniques enhance
proper emotional regulation, cognitive restructuring, and balanced interpretation within the prefrontal cortex. This process effectively resolves those ‘stuck’ memories, reduces indecision, eases persistent worries or fears about responsibilities, enhances thought clarity and logical thought processing, and promotes the health of your emotional memory.
The EMDR Therapy Structure
EMDR intervention does not require talk therapy, medication, or any invasive technology to rewire the brain. You do not need to understand the cause of your memory glitch or find the source of your problem, which is standard practice in talk therapy. The techniques involved help process and integrate your thoughts and emotions effectively.
The therapy also improves responsiveness to other psychotherapeutic interventions, such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Thus, if your counseling psychologist recommends other interventions, EMDR therapy increases the chances of a successful outcome. There are only 6 to 12 brief therapy sessions, with many patients finding relief from the first few sessions.
Who Is Eligible for EMDR Therapy?
Consider EMDR therapy if you feel overwhelmed by the working environment. It may be time to seek EMDR treatment if you are in a high-stress career or are a senior in your field with
numerous responsibilities that leave you frustrated, irritated, anxious or burned out. This therapy could also be beneficial if you feel stuck in your career, yearning for advancement but hitting a wall. It can reignite your creative spark if you are a writer, artist, or entrepreneur experiencing a dry spell of ideas.
You may also benefit from this therapy if you feel dissatisfied or empty with your current success, career trajectory, or accomplishments. EMDR enhances thought clarity, decision-making, logical deliberation, and healthy emotional regulation.
Find Help Today Through EMDR Therapy
Working in a highly stressful environment with numerous responsibilities can overwhelm any woman skilled in multitasking. High performance comes with significant mental anguish and exhaustion. Therefore, take care of your mind with the most convenient intervention available.
You do not need to feel stuck or second-guess your decisions. Work through the clog in your mind with this quick and easy intervention. Ensure your therapist of choice is certified in EMDR treatment for effective outcomes.
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