EMDR therapy

EMDR therapy, also known as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, is a method of mental health care. In order to process painful memories using this technique, you must move your eyes in a precise manner. Your recovery from trauma or other upsetting life events is the aim of EMDR. EMDR is a relatively recent therapy approach when compared to other types. In 1989, the first clinical study examining EMDR was conducted. Since EMDR’s creation, many of clinical trials have demonstrated its efficacy and ability to treat a person more quickly than many other techniques.

Who requires EMDR therapy?

People with a variety of mental health issues can benefit from EMDR. Adolescents, teenagers and adults of all ages can benefit from this treatment. Some healthcare practitioners also specialize in EMDR for children.

Why is EMDR therapy applied?

It’s not necessary to go into great detail about a traumatic event during EMDR therapy. Instead, EMDR therapy focuses on altering the feelings, ideas, or actions that follow a stressful encounter (trauma). This enables your brain’s inherent mending mechanism to continue. The terms “mind” and “brain,” which are sometimes used interchangeably, are not the same. One of your body’s organs is your brain. The collection of memories, experiences, beliefs, and thoughts in your mind is what makes you who you are.

The structure of your brain determines how your mind functions. Networks of brain cells in various locations communicate within that structure. This is especially true for passages that ask you to use your senses and memory. The collaboration between those locations is sped up and made simpler by the networking. Because of this, your senses—including sights, sounds, scents, tastes, and feels—can jog vivid memories.

Adaptive Information Processing and EMDR therapy

The Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, a hypothesis regarding how your brain stores memories, is the foundation of EMDR. This idea acknowledges that your brain retains normal and traumatic memories differently. Francine Shapiro, PhD, who invented EMDR, is the author of this theory.

Your brain stores memories easily when things go according to plan. Additionally, it networks them so that they connect to other memories you have. That networking doesn’t function well while upsetting or disturbing situations are occurring. There can be a gap between what you feel, hear, and see and what your brain stores in memory through language when the brain goes “offline.”

Frequently, the way your brain stores memories of trauma prevents good healing. Trauma is like a wound that hasn’t been given enough time to heal in your brain. Your brain didn’t get the signal that the threat was past since it didn’t have a chance to recover.

Recent events can reinforce traumatic memories from the past and reinforce unfavorable experiences repeatedly. That interferes with the connections between your memories and sensations. Additionally, it harms your mind. Your mind is also more sensitive to anything you saw, heard, smelt, or felt during a traumatic incident, just as your body is more sensitive to pain from an injury.

This applies to both remembered events and memories that have been repressed. Your mind tries to repress memories in order to avoid accessing them because they are painful or upsetting, similar to how you learn not to touch a hot fire because it burns your hand. The suppression is imperfect, thus the “injury” may still result in undesirable signs and feelings.

Triggers

These incorrectly stored memories will be “triggered” by sights, sounds, and odors that have a relationship to or likeness to a traumatic incident. These can elicit intense emotions of fear, anxiety, rage, or panic, unlike other memories.

A post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, flashback is an illustration of this, where poor networking and storage lead your mind to retrieve those memories in an uncontrolled, distorted, and overwhelming way. Because of this, many who frequently experience flashbacks say they feel as though they are reliving a traumatic experience. The past is turned into the present.

Repair and reprocessing

In order to access memories of a traumatic incident, you must go through EMDR therapy. Accessing those memories aids in the reprocessing of the unpleasant event memories when combined with eye movements and guided directions.

This reprocessing aids in the “healing” of the mental damage caused by that memory. You won’t feel like you’re reliving it when you recall what happened, and the associated emotions will be lot easier to control.

Suggestion for read: EMDR Procedure What happens during EMDR therapy?

What conditions and issues does EMDR address?

Post-traumatic stress disorder is the condition for which EMDR therapy is most frequently used (PTSD). The following conditions are also treated with it by mental healthcare professionals:

• Anxiety disorders, include social anxiety disorder and phobias as well as generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder.
• Depression disorders, including major depressive disorder, chronic depression, and depression brought on by disease.
• Dissociative disorders, such as depersonalization or derealization disorder and amnesia or dissociative identity disorder.
• Eating disorders, include binge eating disorder, bulimia nervosa, and anorexia nervosa.
• Dysphoria of gender (feeling as though your gender is different from the one assigned to you at birth).
• Obsessive-compulsive disorders, including body dysmorphic disorder, hoarding disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
• Borderline personality disorder, avoidant personality disorder, and antisocial personality disorder are examples of personality disorders.
• Acute stress disorder, PTSD, and adjustment disorder are all trauma-related disorders.

How widespread is EMDR treatment?

EMDR therapy is widely used everywhere in the world,. The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense in the US list EMDR as a “best practice” for treating PTSD in veterans. Numerous clinical trials, research investigations, and academic papers have been written about EMDR. The World Health Organization (WHO), as well as government organizations and agencies in the UK, Australia, and Germany, among others, have all given it their official approval.

Is EMDR therapy questionable?

There is some debate concerning the reasons why EMDR is effective. Dr. Francine Shapiro, who discovered the eye movement technique she later utilized to construct this therapeutic procedure, eventually came up with a working theory about how your brain remembers memories.

That debate, however, is not focused on the question of whether or if EMDR is effective. Numerous research studies and controlled trials have examined EMDR and demonstrated its efficacy.

Here are few certified therapists who you can get in touch and book a therapy session with:

Stuart Alderton

Don French

Natasha Fletcher