What is EMDR Therapy?
This 10 minute video will give you a quick glimpse of EMDR therapy. You will hear the perspective from clinicians and clients.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy is a treatment method aimed to resolve emotional difficulties caused by disturbing, difficult, or frightening life experiences. We usually call those experiences trauma. When a disturbing event or trauma occurs, it can get locked in the nervous system with the original picture, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
EMDR therapy combines evidence-based therapy with “bilateral stimulation” to dissipate the upset (usually in physical responses that feel beyond our control (i.e. feeling your heart will beat out of your chest, difficulty breathing, feeling frozen or stuck) associated with the experience.
Bilateral stimulation (BLS) refers to the use of alternating, right left tracking that may take the form of eye movements, tones, or tones delivered to each ear, or tactile stimulation, such as alternating hand taps. This will allow you to unlock the nervous system and process the experience.
EMDR therapy helps to process the troubling thoughts, feelings, and memories and, as a result, strengthens feelings of confidence, calmness and mastery so that you can experience a healthy way of functioning.
It is important to remember that it is your own brain that will be doing the healing and that you are the one in control.
WHAT WILL SESSIONS LOOK LIKE?
Before we ever begin processing any of the trauma, we will work collaboratively to ensure you are well-resourced to manage the distress of processing these thoughts, feelings and memories. This will come in a variety of guided and independent coping skills based on what is most useful to you. When we agree that you have some mastery of these skills, we will then identify a target to begin processing.
I will guide you to bring up a memory, issue, or symptom you want to work on with the picture, thoughts, feelings, and body sensations associated with it in order to stimulate the memory network. Then we will begin the BLS, and you will let whatever happens happen without censoring it. It is like a mind-body free association. At times, I will stop you and ask you what you are noticing, and you simply report back to me your experience at that moment. We will then begin a new set of BLS. At times, I will ask you to return to the memory you started with and to tell me your experience, and to rate the level of disturbance on a scale from “0 to 10”.
It is most important that you not judge or censor your experience. There are no “supposed to’s” in this process. Try to remember that we are reprocessing old stuff. It may feel real, but it’s just the old memories locked in the brain. It is important that you keep one foot in the present with me as you are working on the old memory. This is where that early resourcing really comes into play! We’ll keep doing BLS and check-ins until the memory you started with is no longer disturbing to you.
Again, you are in control and I will use my clinical judgement as well as any cues from you to ensure you are processing at the level that is tolerable for you. I will never push you beyond where you want to or are ready to go.
