There is so much change in the air, especially when it comes to the concept of “trauma work”; a buzz phrase that is becoming more and more common across social media outlets and major news platforms around the country. Talk therapy is almost normalized for even the most average of Joes and there is an avenue of accessibility to mental health topics that is long overdue. Our use of the word “trauma” in this article is to include any deeply disturbing or distressing experience. In the past, moving passed traumas was most commonly addressed using something called “exposure therapy”, where a person would call out the skeleton in the room and repeat exposure to that fear/phobia/disturbing experience until it was familiar enough to tolerate. As you might understand, this technique oftentimes enhanced the issue at hand or created a type of dissociation that could cause that memory to be buried rather than processed fully.

While this technique has worked for some, there are many that have been attending therapy sessions for decades and are still feeling emotionally, and even physically, limited by events from the past. They can see a trauma, they can talk about a trauma, they can intellectually comprehend that trauma and yet there are still deep-seeded emotions and behaviors that are rooting down the -oftentimes harmful- coping mechanisms that were created out of that trauma. 

In walks EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), this technique “… shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma, much as the body recovers from physical trauma” (www.emdr.com). By using combination bilateral stimulation, in this case eye movements and hand tapping, a traumatic memory can be transferred from the amygdala (fear center) of the brain and into the long-term storage portion of the brain. When this transference takes place, it doesn’t delete the memory from one’s mind, but instead gives it the opportunity to be seen and processed without the same fight-or-flight responses.  Which in turn allows the body/mind/spirit the opportunity to re-program itself. “Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR therapy result not so much from clinician interpretation, but from the client’s own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes… Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed.”

This aspect of holding space and providing tools so a client can heal themselves is central to the practice of Susanna Short, one of the most recent additions to the Rose Center for Integrative Health here in the Jemez Valley. In addition to EMDR, she specializes in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Coherence Therapy and mindfulness practices, all of which are centered around the concept that knowledge and wisdom are already inside of the brain. In over twenty years of her practice as a licensed therapist, she has specialized in sexual trauma and adolescence and finds herself branching out to many walks of life, including couples therapy. My heart couldn’t help but be warmed by the kindness, acceptance and outright hilarity of Susanna’s demeanor, she summed it up well as our conversation came to a close with, “The humorless therapist is more than anyone should endure.”

At first, the idea of approaching “trauma work” with compassionate humor or balancing the brain with eye and hand movements might sound a little bit ludicrous. Yet for clients that have gone out on that limb, many were pleasantly surprised by the shifts waiting for them on the other side. 

At this time Susanna Short, of SShort Counseling, is licensed in New Mexico, Colorado and Minnesota and provides her services on a sliding scale. Though Medicare and insurance options are not yet available, she is in the process of making that an option and looks forward to being able to expand availability to her services via these means in the future. For bookings, call (575) 376-7594 or e-mail sshortcounseling@gmail.com