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What Is It?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of psychotherapy that helps people process traumatic memories and other distressing experiences. During EMDR, the patient focuses on a traumatic memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation, usually eye movements. The goal is to change the way the memory is stored in the brain, which can help reduce the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal.  EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain's information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can causes intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

Twenty positive controlled outcome studies have been done on EMDR.  Some of the studies show that 84%-90% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress disorder after only three 90-minute sessions. Another study, funded by the HMO Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions. In other research, 77% of combat veterans were free of PTSD in 12 sessions. There has been such extensive research on EMDR that it is now recognized as an effective form of treatment for trauma and other disturbing experiences by organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the Department of Defense. Given the worldwide recognition as an effective treatment of trauma, you can see how EMDR would be effective in treating the “everyday” memories that create low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, and the myriad problems that bring individuals in for therapy. Over 70,000 clinicians throughout the world use EMDR. Millions of people have been treated successfully over the past 20 years.

EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment.  Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session. After the clinician has determined which memory to target first, the client is asked to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and to use his/her eyes to track the therapist's hand as it moves back and forth across the client's field of vision.  As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise and the client begins to process the memory and disturbing feelings. In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. For instance, a rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief that, "I survived it and I am strong."  Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR result from the client’s own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes, not clinical interpretation. The net effect is that clients report feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed. As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, the clients’ thoughts, feelings and behavior are robust indicators of emotional health and resolution—all without speaking in detail or doing homework, which is sometimes used in other types of therapy.

Retrieved from www.EMDRIA.com