How EMDR Therapy Can Strengthen Your Marriage

Sometimes a fight with your partner can feel like the end of the world. You may find yourself wondering, “why does my reaction feel outsized?” or “why am I so triggered to shut down?” These are questions that can be addressed in couples therapy, but that may also warrant some EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy intervention.

Trauma that has been left unhealed can show up in your most intimate relationships, even if the traumas seem minor or occurred years before you met your partner. The memories and the wounds linger and can make a seemingly innocent or simple event be one of deep pain.

EMDR and Couples Therapy: A Perfect Marriage

EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation to help reprocess memories that are stuck. Bilateral stimulation most commonly looks like eye movement, but can involve tapping or even walking. Any activity that activates and stimulates both sides of the brain. Many struggles in relationship stem from wounding in our attachment in our formative years or trauma. It’s often not as simple as “bad communication” in a marriage. EMDR therapy will help identify the origin of those emotional responses and help understand why they get activated in certain circumstances.

Trauma Triggers

Experiences like neglect, abandonment, criticism, harsh punishments, betrayals can all lead to a child feeling as though the world is not safe. When this happens, even years removed from the event, the negative feelings these experiences left can get activated. When spouses are fighting, one partner’s momentary withdrawal may feel like abandonment to the other. This is often through no fault of the partner, who may not realize that they’re pressing on an old wound. They may be just as confused by the outsized reaction as you are. By meeting with a trained EMDR therapist, you can trace the current pressure point back to the original source and with the reprocessing, put the memory and its emotional power in its proper place in order to find emotional healing and change.

Safety Created

As EMDR helps you uncover the areas of wounding you’ve received, and helps you make sense of your experience, the door for healing opens. Once you feel as though you better understand yourself, you can help your spouse understand you too. As you feel more regulated and calmer in your body, you are able to respond to situations instead of reacting. These responses help you to see your spouse not as an enemy to be defeated in an argument, but as a partner who wants to help you.

You also begin to see the wounded areas of your spouse and how sometimes their reactions come from a place of pain, instead of a place of hatred or contempt for you! Beginning to understand the “why” of each other’s triggers can be immensely freeing. A couple’s therapist can be an immense catalyst for helping these changes occur in your relationship or marriage. The trained marriage counselor can help you develop empathy where once contempt or misunderstanding existed.

What to Expect in Couples Therapy

Your couple’s therapist will help you identify the current relational stressors and conflicts you’re experiencing and help you link that back to earlier times in your life that may have been traumatic for you. Oftentimes the therapist will help with resource building, ensuring that your internal safety and sense of self-regulation is strong before they being the EMDR processing. Pending your level or safety with your spouse, they may or not be present in the room for your experience.

As you and your therapist uses EMDR, you may feel a sense of lightness and experience less fights in your marriage, as well as finding a deeper connection as you build trust and repair prior damage. EMDR therapy isn’t just about resolving past trauma, but about freeing your current relationships from continuing the cycle you’re trapped in. If you and your spouse find yourselves trapped in the same painful patterns, consider reaching out to one of our trained couple’s therapists or EMDR therapists to see how EMDR can help you show up in meaningful ways with your spouse. Sometimes going back is the best way to go forward.

To schedule a consultation for couples therapy, marriage counseling, or EMDR therapy, reach out below!