Natural Disaster Trauma

Hous­ton, Texas, is a fan­tas­tic city. Over 2 mil­lion peo­ple live here, speak­ing 145 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. It’s home to NASA’s John­son Space Cen­ter and has more than 10,000 restau­rants with food from all over the world.

But things are not always rosy in Hous­ton. The Greater Hous­ton area has been in the eye of many destruc­tive storms and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. FEMA has declared a dis­as­ter 26 times in the past 41 years here.

The worst was the Great Galve­ston Storm in 1900, which killed more peo­ple than any oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ter in U.S. his­to­ry. More recent­ly, we’ve had Hur­ri­cane Har­vey in 2017, Win­ter Storm Uri in 2021, and Hur­ri­cane Nicholas in 2021.

These dis­as­ters flood­ed the city and left many peo­ple scared, upset and unable to live nor­mal­ly again. Even pets were affect­ed, too.

These storms can cause severe trau­ma and stress, ulti­mate­ly lead­ing to PTSD, where even seem­ing­ly lit­tle things like rain on the roof can remind you of the inci­dent — a source of great emo­tion­al dis­com­fort.

If you or any­one you know is deal­ing with this kind of trau­ma,  you may want to con­sid­er try­ing EMDR ther­a­py. It’s rel­a­tive­ly new but can be more effec­tive than con­ven­tion­al ther­a­py meth­ods.

This blog post explains what EMDR ther­a­py is and how it’s helped accel­er­ate trau­ma heal­ing in Bay­ou City, espe­cial­ly in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Har­vey.

 

EMDR Therapy Online

If you want to learn more about EMDR, vis­it here and here. In brief, EMDR or Eye Move­ment Desen­si­ti­za­tion and Repro­cess­ing (EMDR) might sound like some­thing from the future, but it’s a straight­for­ward approach to treat­ing trau­ma that’s been gain­ing trac­tion since the 1980s. It is a psy­chother­a­py tech­nique made to help indi­vid­u­als process and heal from trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries. Many stud­ies have said EMDR ther­a­py effec­tive­ly treats PTSD when it is done for three months. Bet­ter yet, EMDR has been shown to be effec­tive both online and in per­son.

 

How it works

Slow­ly read the full mean­ing of EMDR again, with intent — and you may see the cen­tral idea behind how it works.

‘Desen­si­ti­za­tion’ helps reduce the emo­tion­al inten­si­ty of the trag­ic mem­o­ry so you don’t have to shud­der in fear every time you think of the weath­er or any oth­er trig­ger.

‘Repro­cess­ing’ teach­es you how to reframe these mem­o­ries and the emo­tions con­nect­ed to them, mak­ing mem­o­ries that pre­vi­ous­ly caused immense pain much more man­age­able. Same mem­o­ry but with less emo­tion­al inten­si­ty.

Unlike tra­di­tion­al talk ther­a­py or med­ica­tion, EMDR ther­a­pists use bilat­er­al stim­u­la­tion to help clients desen­si­tize and reprocess.

Let’s break down what bilat­er­al sim­u­la­tion real­ly means.

Bilateral stimulation

A core com­po­nent of EMDR ther­a­py, bilat­er­al stim­u­la­tion involves acti­vat­ing both sides of the brain one at a time.

If you could see a mon­i­tor (like an fMRI) dis­play­ing your brain dur­ing EMDR, you’d notice both sides of your brain light­ing up.

Sim­ply speak­ing to your ther­a­pist will not stim­u­late your brain this way. Only under guid­ed instruc­tions from your ther­a­pist, who will use a con­trolled approach, is it pos­si­ble to acti­vate bilat­er­al stim­u­la­tion.

As of today, the most com­mon meth­ods to stim­u­late the two sides of the brain include:

Eye movements

Mov­ing the eyes back and forth with the help of a device.

Tactile stimulation

Tap­ping on alter­nate sides of the body.

Auditory stimulation

Lis­ten­ing to alter­nat­ing sounds in each ear.

 

For disaster-related trauma, EMDR has changed the game

Is EMDR effec­tive for peo­ple who have expe­ri­enced dis­as­ter in Hous­ton? The short answer is YES.

Dozens of research stud­ies and con­trolled stud­ies say EMDR works. This par­tic­u­lar research, which stud­ied oth­er bod­ies of work on EMDR, iden­ti­fied the pro­ce­dure as very effec­tive.

Sev­en of ten stud­ies in the same research not­ed that EMDR is “more rapid or oth­er­wise supe­ri­or” to CBT (cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py.)

EMDR’s incred­i­bly effi­cient approach to trau­ma heal­ing has earned it a ‘best prac­tice’ tag from the Depart­ment of Vet­er­an Affairs and Defense in the Unit­ed States.

Though EMDR ther­a­py can go on for 12 ses­sions, one study has shown that 84–90% of sin­gle-trau­ma vic­tims no longer have PTSD after three 90-minute ses­sions.

 

A Houston Success Story

A few years back, after the dam­age Hur­ri­cane Har­vey brought, Sarah—a fine Hous­ton resident—experienced severe PTSD symp­toms. Her aware­ness was par­tic­u­lar­ly height­ened when­ev­er she saw a dark cloud in the sky. It was dif­fi­cult to dri­ve, let alone go out­side. For peo­ple like Sarah, EMDR can cre­ate a dra­mat­ic reduc­tion in symp­toms and neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences. This is just one exam­ple of the poten­tial for EMDR treat­ment.

 

EMDR is an asset to Houston, TX

As cli­mate-relat­ed dis­as­ters become more fre­quent, the need for prac­ti­cal, effi­cient trau­ma treat­ment grows.

EMDR could be the tip­ping point that allows Hous­ton and sim­i­lar com­mu­ni­ties to recov­er faster and stronger from future cat­a­stro­phes.

Dis­as­ter recov­ery doesn’t need to take longer than it should. EMDR ther­a­py offers a less tur­bu­lent path for Bay­ou City to build its shared and per­son­al dis­as­ter resilience, enabling it to stand taller than nature’s more vio­lent forces.

 

Online therapy Houston TX

EMDR’s sto­ry in Hous­ton, TX, is more than an inno­v­a­tive ther­a­py tech­nique. It’s a tes­ta­ment to human resilience and the pow­er of sci­en­tif­ic inno­va­tion. As Hous­ton recov­ers and pre­pares for future chal­lenges, EMDR is a treat­ment that can reshape the city’s psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape, one ses­sion at a time.

If you or any­one you know might ben­e­fit from EMDR’s trau­ma-cor­rect­ing pow­ers, you can sched­ule a free con­sul­ta­tion with us at Bridge­Hope Fam­i­ly Ther­a­py here, and let’s dis­cuss next steps.

Check out the rest of our web­site for more resources that could help you heal bet­ter.