Quote by Sandra Paulsen

Dr Sandra Paulsen is known for her work with EMDR on early trauma, trauma in the first few years of life. This sort of trauma is naturally not going to be stored in a person’s brain as a narrative memory with a picture associated with it because the brain has not developed the capacity for that type of memory yet.

Instead the memory of these early childhood experiences are typically stored as somatic (bodily) experiences and are often in some way a symbolic representation or memorial to something that happened to the person.

Often in my work I find that people are initially totally cut off from their bodies or bodily awareness. This is a dissociative strategy that the brain uses to protect the mind from things that were unbearable and/or inescapable.

Early trauma, attachment trauma and developmental trauma all refer to these types of wounding in young children. These are experiences that are often not available to be worked on in the usual talk therapy and need other ways of being accessed.

My particular style is to use EMDR therapy with a focus on addressing the dissociative processes that were built to protect the individual from pain or knowing.