It wasn’t your fault.

Unfortunate circumstances beyond your control are now controlling you – controlling your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.

It’s more like they’re haunting you.

You blame yourself (blaming the victim) and play the same script over and over in your head:

“If I didn’t get so drunk, this wouldn’t have happened to me.”

“I was a bad kid…I deserved to get hit.”

“If I just stayed home that day, this wouldn’t have happened…”

What have you done with those bad memories?

You try to cope by burying the memories deep down, hoping they will never resurface, drink your pain away, or take your frustration out on those who love and care about you.

You can’t erase your memories, but you can certainly reduce or erase your emotional connection to those memories – and that’s more important. Your memories remind you that you’re a survivor; however, your emotional connection to those memories is harmful and does not serve you.

Let’s work on that.

The longer you wait, the worse the memories and nightmares become. But they don’t have to.

No matter how hard you try, you cannot erase the past. Or can you?

That’s where Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) comes in.

ART is a type of brief psychotherapy rooted in existing evidence-based therapies. Research has shown that ART achieves benefits much more rapidly, which makes it much more affordable and cost-effective compared to other therapies that can take up to a year or longer to produce desired results. (Kip, 2012; Kip, 2013)

The goal of ART is to change the way distressing memories and emotions are experienced in order to reduce or eliminate strong physical and emotional reactions. (Finnegan, 2016)

You will be asked to recall the traumatic memories (“scene”) while simultaneously doing bilateral eye movements that produce calming and relaxing affects in your body and mind.

Goal: Leave your past behind.

Afterwards, you will replace your negative traumatic scene with a positive scene so that in the future, the positive scene is what you remember instead of the negative scene.

ART differs from talk therapy. While some traumatic experiences such as rape, abuse, car accidents, natural disasters, or loss of a loved one can be very painful to talk about, patients are not required to talk during ART to achieve recovery – which is another added benefit of ART.

In addition, research has shown that ART does not result in significant negative side effects. (Kip, 2012) (Hernandez, 2016)

Not everyone is a good fit.

ART is not for everyone. During your intake, we will discuss whether ART is appropriate for you.

Let’s find the best version of you.

If you’re ready to try to leave your past behind you and get on with living your best life, your best version of you, call (840) 977-6845, send me an email, or fill out the contact form for a free 15-minute initial consultation.

Make an appointment

References

Kip K.E., Elk C.A., Sullivan K.L., et al. (2012). Brief treatment of symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by use of Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART). Behav Sci (Basel), 2(2):115–134.

Kip K.E., Rosenzweig L., Hernandez D.F., et al. (2013). Randomized controlled trial of accelerated resolution therapy (ART) for symptoms of combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mil Med, 178:1298–1309.

Finnegan, A., Kip, K., Hernandez, D., McGhee, S., Rosenzweig, L., Hynes, C., & Thomas, M. (2016). Accelerated resolution therapy: an innovative mental health intervention to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. BMJ Military Health, 162(2): 90-97.

Hernandez D.F., Waits W., Calvio L., Byrne M. (2016). Practice comparisons between accelerated resolution therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing and cognitive processing therapy with case examples. Nurse Educ Today, 47:74–80.