What is
EMDR?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a specific therapeutic approach initially developed to treat trauma. EMDR has helped up to two million people to date relieve psychological distress.
How Does EMDR Work?
As we go through life everyone experiences both positive and negative events. Negative events can sometimes get "stuck" resulting in the memory remaining as vivid. At times, it can feel as though the person may be reliving the memory with one or more of the senses being activated. This can have a negative impact a person's mental and physical well-being. These negative experiences can develop into negative neural networks and negative beliefs in the brain.
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EMDR works on identifying symptoms and distress resulting from those negative neural networks, beliefs, and experiences and helps the individual access the area of the brain focused on problem- solving to help support the brain's inherent adaptive ability to heal.
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EMDR focuses on a target problem and uses various types of bilateral stimulation such as eye movements, tapping, and sounds.
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Example:
Think of a negative neural network as a chain of dominoes. The first event starts the chain. As we go through life and have additional negative experiences, a new tile gets added to the domino chain. The more tiles added to the chain, the more complex the structure. Traditional trauma-focused therapy works on processing each tile one-by-one. EMDR provides the ability to knock down multiple tiles at once to help speed up the healing process.
EMDR is Evidenced- Based
In 2004, the American Psychiatric Association gave EMDR the same status as CBT as an effective treatment.
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In 2011, the Department of Veterans Affairs & Department of Defense identified EMDR as one of four therapies given the highest level of evidence and recommended for PTSD.
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In 2011, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) cited EMDR as an evidenced-based practice for the treatment of PTSD, anxiety, and depression symtpoms.
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In 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) indicate only Trauma- Focused CBT and EMDR as the only psychotherapies recommended for children, adolescents, and adults with PTSD.
EMDR Processing & Bilateral Stimulation
Eye Movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation (BLS) seem to activate your problem-solving process, something that happens during REM sleep when your eyes are darting back and forth. Bilateral stimulation can be eye moment, tapping, or sounds. By focusing on a specific problem and its negative and positive emotions, sensations, and beliefs, then adding bilateral stimulation, your brain begins problem solving. Since you are focused on the specific problem, your brain can work on it more effectively than what may randomly come up when sleeping.
