I first heard of Clara Long and EMDR therapy through an article in a local magazine and decided to visit the Wantage Natural Therapy Clinic to find out more.  I had been suffering from persistent panic attacks for a while, and had been persuaded by my older daughter and husband to do something about my state of mind.
 
Many factors contributed to my (then) mental state, the main one being that, for all of my life, I had been busy getting on with things, and pushing aside the various tragedies I had had to cope with on the way.  Since relocating to this part of England , I had had the time and opportunity to think about myself more, as well as managing to fall out with both daughters, which caused me great distress.
 
When I first entered The Wantage Natural Therapy Centre I noted that it was cool, white and uncluttered.   I met Clara who explained that she is a registered mental health nurse and an accredited EMDR practitioner.   She explained that EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing and is a new psychotherapy used to treat troubling symptoms, such as anxiety, guilt, anger, depression, panic, sleep disturbance, and flashbacks that are the result of traumatic experiences.

The therapy involves stimulating the left and the right hemispheres of the brain, very much like that experienced in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. The difference is that the person is awake and aware of what is being processed.
  
As we began the reprocessing technique I told her of the particularly painful episodes I had been through. Slowly and methodically we went through them - in particular the sudden death of my first husband when we lived in East Africa .  I was only 32 years old with young children and lived - as everyone else did - in a company house.   While processing this, I put my hands downward on my knees and went through that terrible event - the actual death of my husband in hospital, until there came a time when I could not proceed any further.  My head ached, I was crying and I just thought I couldn't go on.  In the meantime I was hardly aware that Clara was tapping the backs of my hands, left to right, left to right, left to right.....

During all this time she spoke to me gently, eventually leading me to a 'safe place' - a place I remember being completely happy - looking out at a sun-dappled sea from the balcony of a big ship, the sun on my face, the smell and sound of the sea around me. 
 
In subsequent sessions I went through similar episodes, although none as traumatic.  Each time Clara led me back safely, in the meantime checking my distress ratings.   I have learned to put space between the 'then' and the 'now', my 'levels of misery' if you can understand that, or the distress ratings, have gone down, often from a 9/10 to a 3/10 (10= very distressing).
 
In ways which I admit I do not fully understand, Clara has helped me to deal with the panic attacks, which occur very infrequently these days.  I would recommend this therapy to anyone who suffers from similar distressing symptoms and would like to re-take control of their lives.

EMDR therapy is a powerful and relatively new form of psychotherapy which was discovered and developed by Francine Shapiro in 1989. It is a non-drug, non-hypnotic psychotherapy procedure which does not require the therapist to know details of the events that have led the client to therapy, only what happens during the process.