Roger Mills
Roger has been working as a therapist for over 20 years. He has two Masters level qualifications in counselling and psychotherapy (from Regents College and from The Westminster Pastoral Foundation) and he has been an accredited counsellor with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy since 2001.
He began his counselling training in his mid thirties. Before he moved into counselling Roger had several different careers, including lecturing in History of Art and working as a journalist on a Classical Music Magazine.
His counselling training covered a number of different approaches including Existential therapy, Psychodynamic therapy and CBT. For the last ten years he has focussed largely on using EMDR because he finds it to be - by a distance - the most powerful and effective approach that he has worked with.
Although Roger now works exclusively in private practice, he’s had considerable experience working as a therapist in the NHS and in council run mental health services in London. He has also worked for EAP companies (organisations that provide mental health support for businesses), and has spent a number of years as a therapist at one of the Priory Hospitals, focusing there on clients suffering from PTSD.
As well as providing therapy, Roger has also worked as a trainer, writing and leading courses for counsellors and other professionals in areas such as stress management, post trauma counselling and sickness absence management.
About EMDR
One of the fundamental ideas behind EMDR is that our mental health problems are mostly caused by experiences that were emotionally overwhelming, and which get stuck in our nervous systems.
EMDR can be used on adult traumas like being in a car accident. But it is also effective for problems like anxiety or low self-esteem. This kind of issue can usually be traced back to childhood. For example, if you had parents or carers who were physically aggressive, if you were subjected to sexual abuse, or if you experienced a loss, bereavement or a family break-up. There are subtler ‘traumas’ which can also influence life profoundly as well, for example experiencing parenting in which you did not feel loved or valued.
Traumatic early experiences get stuck in us, a bit like a computer programme that is running silently in the background. And they often lead us to have a distorted sense of things in adult life. So, for example, a boss who offers a mild criticism might be seen as the same as the dad for whom you were never good enough, triggering huge anxiety. Or the end of a relationship might feel unbearable because you experienced a painful separation or loss when you were little.
EMDR begins by identifying the problems and their root causes, and by developing a series of resources which help us to feel emotionally stronger. We then focus on the traumatic experiences themselves using eye movements or tapping on one side of the body and then the other to detoxify the trauma. This process may sound a bit strange, but most people find that eye movements or tapping dissolves the emotional charge of the original distressing experience, and as that happens life in the here and now begins to feel much more positive.
Another important element in EMDR treatment is that we use ‘resource figures’ to ‘rewrite’ early, disturbing experiences. An example of this would be inviting a person who experienced critical and aggressive treatment from a parent, to re-imagine the distressing scenes, but with their adult self present to support them. Using the creative imagination in this way we can change how the memory feels so that the dysfunctional computer programme stops running in the background.