Isolation through trauma
Loneliness is a feeling that everyone experiences from time to time. Sometimes it is short-lived, but sometimes it can be a feeling that is present for a longer period of time. Loneliness is known to affect many elderly people. Many people around them drop out and they are not so mobile to go out easily. Loneliness is then on the horizon. But you can also become lonely, because you have a trauma, you are completely isolated from everything and everyone and so you isolate yourself. You close yourself off from everything and everyone and so you isolate yourself.
What is isolation?
When you isolate yourself, you set yourself apart. At first, there will be no isolation. You will develop avoidance behaviour. Because you do not want to be reminded of a fear or a traumatic thought, you avoid certain situations, locations or people. These are stimuli that remind you of that unpleasant thought or you have developed a fear of that specific situation. The urge to avoid situations will become progressively worse. This is officially called a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). With PTSD you constantly have flashbacks of the trauma and precisely because of this you try to do everything to avoid it, with isolation as the extreme result.
What are the consequences of isolating yourself?
Isolating yourself is almost a logical consequence when you have been diagnosed with a PTSD. This has a very big impact on your life. Even if you only try to avoid one particular situation, you may develop several types of fears and phobias in the meantime. In addition to avoiding your trauma, you now try to avoid your developed fear or phobia, which only increases your loneliness. You can no longer leave your home and this prevents you from going to work. The whole situation has become a downward spiral from which you can no longer escape and which can push you into depression. Do you have PTSD? Then you need professional help and especially if you have isolated yourself.
How do you get out of your isolated situation?
Have you isolated yourself by not wanting to be confronted with your traumatic experience? Then it is difficult to come out of it on your own. In that case you also have PTSD, so there are more complaints at play. PTSD is caused by an unprocessed trauma and can only be solved with professional help. EMDR is one of the best treatments for this. EMDR stands for ‘Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing’. In other words: by means of distraction with eye movements, the experienced event is again stored in the memory, but no longer as a trauma. It is a therapy that has already proven to be successful, but for science it is still unclear how exactly the therapy works in the brain.
The effect of EMDR
During a session of EMDR, the therapist will ask you to recall the trauma in your mind. So you have to relive it, including all the accompanying feelings and thoughts. This is confronting, but it is the first step towards recovery. As soon as you relive the trauma, the therapist provides a distraction. This may be a hand signal which you have to follow with your eyes, but you may also be given headphones so that you are distracted by sound signals. At that moment you no longer think about the trauma and you will notice that the next time it is easier to recall the trauma. After a while the sharp edges disappear. When you have gone through all the sessions, chances are that you have fully processed the trauma and that you no longer avoid situations. Isolating yourself is no longer applicable.
Digital innovations from Psylaris for EMDR therapy
Digital innovations are increasingly used in the mental healthcare sector. This is exactly what Psylaris is aiming for. In this way, mental healthcare becomes more accessible and effective. Therefore, Psylaris has developed an EMDR module for virtual reality. With VR glasses on, the client will experience a distraction, or working memory load, much more intensely. After all, with the VR glasses on, he/she is closed off from reality. With virtual reality, the practitioner has many more (digital) possibilities to distract with the feature to add videos during the session.
Another solution of Psylaris, is EMDR-remote. This is ideal for clients who are isolated at home and don’t dare to go out. EMDR-Remote is an online platform, where both the client and the practitioner can log in. Through a stable connection, EMDR is given remotely via video calling. Here, too, the practitioner has many possibilities for distraction and the isolated client is still treated in a safe domestic environment.
EMDR therapy with modern methods
As a developer of modern methods and tools in mental healthcare, Psylaris has also made EMDR easy with modern techniques. Virtual reality, for example, plays an increasingly important role in the mental healthcare sector. With EMDR-VR and EMDR-plus, Psylaris has developed a VR-module. The module can easily be used by the practitioner and has many distraction possibilities. The client gets a more intense distraction than during a regular treatment. The VR glasses can be used both at home and in the treatment room. This makes both the practitioner and the client more flexible.
If the client is unable to come to the treatment centre, Psylaris uses EMDR-remote to make it possible to receive EMDR treatment at home. EMDR-remote is the online EMDR platform of Psylaris, where the practitioner and the client can conduct an EMDR session via video calling. Again, the practitioner has many possibilities to distract and the client, who is chained to the house, is still being treated.
