EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an integrative psychotherapy approach that has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. EMDR is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many different treatment approaches.

Using this eye movement desensitization technique followed by hypnotherapy usually in the same session a client’s disturbing emotions and sensations can go completely and usually a client will actually surpass their initial goals and heal beyond their expectations. During this desensitization, the therapist leads the person in sets of eye movement (or other forms of stimulation) with appropriate shifts and changes of focus until the anxiety levels are reduced.

EMDR can reprocess completely the experiences that are causing problems, processing does not mean talking about it. Processing means allowing experiences that are causing problems to be digested and stored appropriately in your brain. That means that what is useful to you from an experience will be learned, and stored with appropriate emotions in your brain, and be able to guide you in positive ways in the future. The inappropriate emotions, beliefs, and body sensations will be discarded. Negative emotions, feelings and behaviours are generally caused by unresolved experiences, EMDR therapy will leave you with the emotions, understanding, and perspectives that will lead to healthy and useful behaviours and interactions.

One of the unusual features of EMDR is that the person seeking treatment does not have to discuss any of his disturbing memories in detail. So while some individuals are comfortable, and even prefer, giving specifics, other people may present more of a general picture or outline. When the therapist asks, for example, “What event do you remember that made you feel worthless and useless?” the person may say, “It was something my brother did to me.” That is all the information the therapist needs to identify and target the event with EMDR.

To date, EMDR therapy has helped millions of people of all ages relieve many types of psychological stress.

Evaluations of thousands of EMDR sessions indicate that there is a physical response to unresolved thoughts. This finding has been supported by independent studies of memory indicating that when a person is negatively affected by trauma, information about the traumatic event is stored in motoric (or body systems) memory, rather than narrative memory, and retains the negative emotions and physical sensations of the original event. When that information is processed, however, it can then move to narrative (or verbalisable) memory and the body sensations and negative feelings associated with it disappear. The goal is to concentrate on and increase the strength of the positive belief that the person has identified to replace his original negative belief.

For most clients this will take only 1-4 sessions. For others, with a very traumatized background, or with certain diagnoses, a longer time may be necessary.