EMDR is ‘short’ for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing therapy. It is a comprehensive type of therapy, not just the part most people associate with it: which is the eye movement back and forth (bilateral stimulation). The eye movements can be achieved through finger movements, watching a light bar, holding the buzzers, tapping on knees, or audio tones through headphones. It is an eight phase treatment created by Francine Shapiro for addressing traumatic memories which includes such steps as:  history taking, practicing re-stabilizing your emotions, the actual processing of the trauma, the closure step, logging your reactions, and then re-checking the memory during the next session.

During the processing session the therapist will ask for the most disturbing ‘picture’ of the event, what your negative belief might be, what you’d like to believe, how true that feels, and how disturbing the event feels. And then they will invite you to hold that picture and those negative beliefs together while the therapist starts the BLS. They’ll  suggests you ‘allow your brain to go where it needs to go’. The therapist will stop you every 30 or so seconds, and ask about what you are aware of- if there is any change in what you see, think, or feel in your body.

EMDR was originally created for and studied with military veterans, then its use expanded to other people who had experienced mostly single incident traumas. More recently, the EMDRIA organization has approved its use for sexual abuse recovery, marital infidelity recovery, addiction, personality disorders, phobias, and more. We know that everything we’ve ever experienced is connected in our brains, and the theorists believe that in healthy adaptive memory networks (AIP), everything works together to give us the best information to support our survival and our relationships. But they believe traumas become ‘cut off’ or ‘sealed off’ from our AIP, and remains stored in the primitive, reactive part of our brain (the limbic center) where it feels like the trauma happened a second ago, instead of years ago. In EMDR we are working to free up the memory so it can ‘join the other memories’ where we can allow it to fade into the background, rather than driving a continuing sense of shame, rage or danger.

For example this might look like an assault survivor moving from ‘I should have done something’ (feeling shame) into ‘I survived it and I am strong’ (strength). Or a car accident survivor might shift from ‘I’m a failure’ to ‘I did all I can’ and ‘I’m responsible’. The variations are endless, and part of the beauty of EMDR is that the words come from the client, not the therapist. You know best what you need to heal and what shifts need to happen.

While it tends to be faster than other therapy modalities, it is also quite intense and the therapist will do several evaluations to see if a client is a good candidate, screening for dissociative disorders and clients with complex trauma. The client needs to have enough tolerance to tolerate the ‘recall’. If someone has these issues, we can work with you to help you practice stabilization before doing the BLS work. Another beautiful part of EMDR is that it integrates body sensations which holds a great deal of information about the trauma. Many survivors start to feel cut off from their bodies, or manifest distress in migraines, stomach issues, or muscular/skeletal pain.

At the following session you will share what has come up after the processing sessions and either restart the processing where it left off, move into a future tense of using the positive self thoughts, or reassess next steps. We work to integrate things in current life as well, knowing that unfinished material will get triggered by current events. There is a great deal of ‘art’ to this process and each therapist provides a unique feel. But this will be the predictable structure.