After a traumatic experience, most people expect that time will help. And for many people, it does. The intense distress that follows trauma, the intrusive memories, the fear, the hyper-vigilance, does tend to reduce naturally over the months that follow, as the mind gradually processes what happened and the sense of danger slowly settles. But for others, that natural settling does not happen. The symptoms do not fade. They persist, or in some cases intensify. Months pass, so

If you've been diagnosed with PTSD, or suspect that what you're experiencing fits that description, you may have been pointed toward EMDR as a treatment option. It's recommended by NICE as a first-line treatment for PTSD, has a strong and growing evidence base, and is increasingly available both through the NHS and in private practice. But knowing that EMDR is recommended and understanding what it actually involves — what happens in sessions, how it feels, how long it takes,

If you've been struggling with the effects of a traumatic experience — intrusive memories, flashbacks, a persistent sense of threat that won't settle — you may have come across EMDR as a possible treatment. It has a strong evidence base, is recommended by NICE (the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) for PTSD, and is increasingly well known outside clinical circles. But finding an EMDR therapist in the West Midlands, understanding what the therapy actually invo

An EMDR intensive is an extended, concentrated format of EMDR therapy — typically delivered as a half-day or full-day session, rather than one hour per week. Instead of working in 60-minute windows with six days between each session, you work in a sustained block. This allows for deeper processing within a single sitting, without the repeated "start up, wind down, wait a week" cycle that standard weekly therapy requires.

It is positive that awareness, and to a large degree acceptance, of Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD) has grown within the military community over the last two decades. There has been a lot of work by service people and veterans themselves to promote awareness and they deserve genuine credit for their work which will have saved lives as a result. Unfortunately, along with greater awareness has come an unhelpful narrative of PTSD as a heroic injury. At first glance, it mig