STARR Experts
Practitioner Profile – Victoria Britt: EMDR Therapy
Victoria Britt
LCSW, LMFT
Experience Therapist with Over 32 Years of Experience, Somatic Experience Practitioner and a Trainer in Thought Field Therapy, Co-Authored Evolving Though Field Therapy a Guidebook for Clinicians
Victoria’s Bio:
Victoria Britt has been a clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist for 32 years. She was trained in EMDR in 1994 and joined the EMDR Institute teaching staff in 1995. In her full-time practice, she specializes in working with adults who have been abused as children; rape victims, dissociative disorders, PTSD and anxiety disorders. Because trauma can have such a devastating effect on the mind/body system she has sought out different approaches to healing: she is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and a trainer in Thought Field therapy. Her pro bono work includes seeing victims of domestic violence and treating survivors and family members after the 9/11 attacks. She also volunteers for EMDR-HAP in the USA. She teaches workshops in EMDR Therapy on a regular basis and is a sought-after case consultant and supervisor.
Victoria co-authored “Evolving Thought Field Therapy: The Clinician’s Handbook of Diagnosis, Treatment Theory and Theory” and has been a contributing editor on several EMDR texts.
According to Victoria, why EMDR Therapy works to improve mental health:
EMDR Therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) was developed by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. 30 years ago and in that short time has become an intensively researched and deeply respected approach to many psychological issues. A basic tenet of EMDR is almost all of these problems can be traced back to traumatic events: not just the more obvious ones like accidents or abuse but ones that we don’t think of as trauma, such as attachment disruptions, medical events, losses, bullying or school traumas. These traumas can alter the course of our lives in subtle and profound ways, affecting our life choices, our beliefs about ourselves and our physical health.
EMDR Therapy offers the opportunity to reprocess these events in a safe environment opening up the client to new possibilities and more adaptive responses to the old events that kept people locked in a negative, repetitive cycles. Although originally designed to treat PTSD, EMDR has been found to be extremely valuable in treating a host of disorders such as anxiety, phobia, relational issues, panic disorder, depression and addictive behaviors. Using a unique method which includes bi-lateral stimulation, it can resolve matters like recent trauma quickly and with strong long-term effect. Hundreds of thousands of people have been treated with EMDR Therapy worldwide: Victoria personally has treated over a thousand in her ever-evolving practice of it and she continues to explore new ways of applying it to her practice.
Victoria’s Resource Recommendations:
