Limassol is a corporate city before it is a holiday one.
Shipping, corporate services, fintech and forex have put a substantial population of senior international people on the island: executives, founders, lawyers and their families, running businesses that happen to be domiciled in Cyprus. Many of them arrived from somewhere else, often in a hurry, and a good number carry something they have never had anywhere sensible to take.
Alongside them is the wider expatriate community, where people have frequently moved a long way from whatever happened and from everyone who knew about it.
The difficulty in both cases is the same. The island is small, the international business community smaller, and specialist provision in English is limited. Seeking help locally means being seen to seek it, in a community where your counterparty at next month’s closing may be in the same waiting room.
Distance is not the same as processing
Moving to a place with better weather and fewer reminders can genuinely help for a while. What it cannot do is process a traumatic memory, and people are often surprised to find that something they had successfully not thought about for a decade returns once life becomes quiet enough.
Trauma tends to wait for safety rather than for readiness.
What EMDR does
It works on traumatic memory directly. For a discrete event, properly processed, it can be remarkably effective and sometimes fast. The memory remains available but loses its capacity to overwhelm.
Where the trauma was prolonged, or began in childhood, the work is slower and broader, because there is no single memory to target. On that distinction.
Practical
Cyprus is two hours ahead of London, which suits the working day at both ends. No referral required, nothing held on the island, and nothing disclosed to anyone without your written consent.
UKCP-registered psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, HCPC-registered art psychotherapist, twenty-five years of practice and over twenty using EMDR. Both registers are public and can be checked independently.
EMDR therapy in London and trauma therapy.
Common questions
Is this confidential from my company and my counterparties?
Entirely. Nothing is held in Cyprus, there is no local practitioner and no waiting room, and nothing is disclosed to any employer, insurer or third party without your written consent. For senior people in a business community as interconnected as Limassol's, that is usually the deciding factor.
Can EMDR be done online?
Yes. It has been used remotely for years and the protocol adapts. What matters is that the clinician is experienced enough to notice what is happening and to slow down when necessary.
How long does it take?
A single traumatic event can sometimes resolve in a small number of sessions. Prolonged trauma, or trauma beginning in childhood, is slower and broader work, and I would rather say so than imply otherwise.