Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
What is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of psychotherapy that helps people to process through traumatic memories. Developed in the late 1980s, EMDR is considered one of the top choices for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
How Does EMDR Work to Resolve PTSD?
EMDR helps people to reprocess traumatic memories and the feelings connected to those memories by stimulating both sides of the body and brain while a person focuses on specific aspects of their trauma. This ‘bilateral stimulation’ typically involves moving the eyes back and forth along a particular path, but tapping alternately on the right and left sides of the body can often achieve the same results. Although it sounds far-fetched, several decades’ worth of clinical research from around the world shows this bilateral stimulation helps the brain to access and work through frightening memories, at the same time it also reduces and can completely eliminate the distressing emotions, mental images, negative self-beliefs and bodily sensations that get fused together with the memories at the moment the trauma occurs.
Both the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs endorse EMDR as an effective treatment for trauma.
What to Expect in EMDR Treatment Sessions?
At the beginning, your therapist will be very interested in hearing about your goals for the therapy, your symptoms, and where you are struggling. A brief review of the trauma and how your symptoms are triggered will help the two of you select the specific targets you’ll work on together. They’ll teach you about how EMDR works, practice the eye movements or other bilateral stimulations, and give you stress management tools, in case you want to use them, as well.
Once you’ve selected a specific trauma memory to work on, your therapist will ask you to pay attention to any thoughts, mental images, emotions or bodily sensations that come up while your eyes follow their finger as they move it back and forth in front of you. At the end of each ‘set’ of these movements, your therapists will ask you to describe the experiences you had, including any changes in your thoughts, emotions and bodily sensation.
With repeated sets of stimulation, clients tend to report that their trauma memories become less painful, they feel less distress and cope better. Through the process, other memories associated with the trauma also become less painful, allowing you to get back to living and enjoying your life.