Trauma Treatment in Med City

For Patients and Loved Ones

Firstly, welcome to our city. I am so proud of my friends and neighbors for the care that you will receive here. They will work hard, think deeply, and do everything they can to find the healing that you are seeking. It was a good decision to come here.

The process, though, of seeking expert medical care at any of the regional centers of specialty medicine, can be difficult and dehumanizing. When I worked at the Clinic, I found that by the time a visitor came to meet with me, they'd been interviewed, poked, prodded; they'd been analyzed, assessed and tested. They felt their identity turning into patient rather than person. Always heading to the next appointment or awaiting the most recent result.

You might be feeling scared and hopeless. You might be worried about your loved one. You're told to eat well and rest, but how can you when you're waiting for a life or death answer from a kind, but somewhat intimidating stranger. You are worried, and it is hard to let that go. You have days filled with interventions and tests and appointments, and hours if not days of waiting and downtime.

And you might have experienced a life threatening event that started this journey, or was part of the progression. It was you, or it was your spouse, parent, or child that you felt helpless to fully meet the demands. You feel helpless at bedside in the hospital while your loved one recovers. Or you were the one with the bad news, the surgery, the long road to recovery. This is trauma; and sometimes it leaves a psychological response.

Intensive EMDR therapy can help. Early EMDR interventions after a horrifying event can help prevent the difficult event from becoming part of a memory network that causes longer-term emotional distress.

When you leave Rochester, leave knowing that you have seen the best doctors in the world, you've had the best advice and best interventions. Physically, anything that could be done has been considered.

But leave Rochester knowing that you have also done what you need to heal the psychological wounds too. Facing significant medical care; enduring medical treatment, being the caregiver, all of these can require adjustment and support.

They can be traumatic.

An EMDR Intensive can help.

For Doctors and Other Providers

You've reached the top of your profession. You decided on a profession that prepares you to help people facing some of the toughest situations they can imagine. You studied hard, spent so much time and money, and are skilled.

Others in your profession look up to you because of the success and accomplishment you've made. You work here.

And medicine and medical care in the United States comes with it several challenges. Maybe the interventions that worked for other patients didn't work this time. Maybe the patient's situation hit close to home. Maybe the prognosis or course that patient had was so hard to witness. Maybe a factor outside of your control or influence hurt the situation.

You've done your best to put your emotions aside so you can do your professional duty to the highest level. You've been the doctor/nurse/social worker/therapist/provider that patient needed. But now you're realizing you're also human. It hurts sometimes.

Sometimes the training process, or the factors in our history that propelled us into the helping professions also have a dark side. Events in the care of patients can combine to become obstacles rather than motivators.

After everything you've invested. You deserve to have some support resolving these blocks so you can enjoy all the possibilities in front of you. So you can care for the next patient, you can freely choose your path. You don't have to struggle or suffer or go a different way.

Intensive focus with EMDR can help you get back the future you had planned. It can help you heal so you can continue to heal others.

EMDR can help with enhancing performance or with treating a diagnosis like anxiety, trauma, depression and more. I'm not on EPIC. Don't let stigma get in the way of achieving your goals and getting some peace of mind.

Intensive EMDR retreats can be scheduled across a weekend or a few weekdays, which many professionals find to be easier than making time for one hour a week in a busy schedule. So, you get the work done more quickly on the calendar. And by not having to open and close the session at an arbitrary therapeutic hour, so you get to your goals more quickly in terms of your time spent with a therapist.

An EMDR Intensive can help.