Recovery time!

Many of you have followed along on the journey of one of our retired horses who loves to provide therapy and train new providers! We are so pleased to report that he’s recovering well and hitting his milestones out of the park!

As a trauma therapist, it’s been interesting to watch his recovery journey. After experiencing a medical emergency, both his body and brain seemed to need some time to recover. Beyond just time, both his body and brain needed repeated safe experiences (which for him looked like time outside with safe horses, just being a horse, and access to consistently safe food and water).

Most interestingly perhaps, after these experiences then his body and brain needed some time just to integrate. At his first few PT sessions he showed trauma responses and would give either a physical or psychological response but rarely both at the same time. Once his body and brain started talking to each other, he started consistently moving forward with joy and eagerness.

As an EMDR therapist (we get sick of writing those phrases in the blog, but it helps a bunch with SEO :)), this is so similar to what we see in humans. Such a big part of EMDR’s efficacy lies in the fact that the brain and body get integrated again. In the particular model we follow here, Somatic and Attachment Focused EMDR, body sensations and interpersonal attachments (as well as attachment styles and responses) are considered when we look at where the trauma might be stuck.

Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) is known for being four-pronged. EMDR works because it addresses not just cognitions, but also memories, emotions and body sensations. The processing work isn’t done until each of those categories is completely addressed.