EMDR is an evidence-based practice (EBP) used to help individuals recover from trauma, PTSD, anxiety, depression, and panic disorder (to name a few). An EPB means the therapy modality has been extensively researched and recognized by many national and international organizations to be an effective treatment.
EMDR is complete therapy with bilateral stimulation (BLS) being a portion of the therapy. EMDR is a strategy to help the body process or emotionally metabolize stuck emotions in the body. People have often expressed frustration in feeling they have no control over their body's response to situations. EMDR can help with this. EMDR supports your physical and emotional body by helping the body digest old experiences and feelings. The benefit of this is that you are then able to respond in the present, rather than using old reactive patterns.
Have you had moments where something; a look, a smell, a similar surrounding or situation has taken you right back to something that happened in the past? This can be with both enjoyable moments or stressful, scary moments. No one turns down the nostalgic memories of summer vacations, happy family moments, or successes such as graduating, winning a tournament or game. Those you can keep and revisit.
It is the moments that caused the hair to raise on the back of your neck, heart to pound, felt like your were frozen, feeling trapped or not knowing what to do. These moments that some how keep playing a part in your here-and-now. The moments where you feel out of control or like you have no control over how your body reacts. It is with these moments EMDR can provide relief. EMDR provides belief by helping the mind metabolize the memory cognitively and physiologically. By putting these memories in the past, our nervous system can begin to relax helping us be more present for today.
In a nutshell, an EMDR therapist will work collaboratively with you on exploring your history, identifying coping abilities, and goals for treatment. If EMDR is a good fit, you will be asked to focus on a specific event. Attention will be given to a target (event), belief, emotion, and body sensation related to this event. Using the protocol you will be asked to hold both the target and negative cognition in mind while applying bilateral stimulation (BLS). Bilateral stimulation is either visual, audible, or tactile. I typically use tactile for in-person sessions and visual or audible for virtual sessions.
The length of time or number of sessions to resolve a target, meaning the distress is brought down to a reported 0 or 1, depends on each individual. Once distress is reported a 0 or 1, we move to installation of the positive cognition. The purpose of this is to strengthen the neural connection and train the mind for any future events with the potential to re-trigger old belief systems.
Trauma is when a person is threatened with death, actual or threatened serious injury, or sexual violence. Other more common life events like job stress, divorce, or accidents can cause a trauma response as well. Experiencing or witnessing a frightening, dangerous, or violent event can overwhelm our body's natural coping abilities. People respond to trauma in many different ways. Some signs of trauma are:
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