EMDR
Therapy

What is EMDR Therapy? 

 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective therapy method. It has been proven to help people from trauma and PTSD symptoms, among other disorders such as anxiety, depression, and other adverse life experiences. 

 

Traumatic and/or adverse events change the way our brain is wired, often leading to a constant state of stress, also known as fight-flight-freeze. This may show up as disturbing thoughts, symptoms, behaviors, and emotions that get the way of our present daily functioning. EMDR helps us resolve our trauma by facilitating the reorganization of thoughts, feelings, and memories that are related to a traumatic event. EMDR decreases the impact of a distressing event(s), allowing you to move forward in a healthy and adaptive way. 

 

How does EMDR work and what is the process? 

 

Humans are amazingly resilient and have a natural way to heal from traumatic memories or adverse events. However, sometimes the distress from a disturbing event remains and shows up as a reaction, such as upsetting images, negative thoughts, body sensations, inappropriate reactions or behaviors, nightmares, or in other scary and confusing ways. Flashbacks may occur and it can feel as if you are reexperiencing that disturbing event all over again. These symptoms are often referred to as an emotional disturbance related to an event(s). Humans are hardwired to figure out ways to protect ourselves. After a traumatic event takes place, your brain stores this specific type of memory differently in an attempt to protect ourselves in case that threat ever happens again. This creates a level of impairment in our daily functioning, leading your brain to assume a threat in situations even if there is actually no threat there.  

 

EMDR involves a bilateral motion of back-and-forth movements by either watching a light bar, holding tappers or listening to sounds. This bilateral stimulation (BLS) is mimicking the eye-movements we naturally do during our REM sleep, and this creates a calming effect and relaxation of the nervous system when thinking about a traumatic event. EMDR therapy will allow you to resolve any unprocessed disturbing memories in the brain. All of these forms of BLS are effective in person or online through telehealth. By focusing on a distressing event and any disturbance that it causes and simultaneously focusing on the BLS, EMDR lessens the impact of the distress. This essentially removes the emotional charge of that event, allowing the brain to move towards healing and recovery. 

 

While the process of EMDR therapy varies client to client, it is conceptualized in eight phases. The eight phases of EMDR therapy include:

 

1. History & Treatment Planning: This phase is spent identifying your symptoms or presenting issues, identifying any significant traumatic or adverse events, as well as developing a treatment plan. Screening for any dissociation also takes place here. 

2. Preparation: A therapeutic alliance is built during this phase. Clinician will spend time educating you about trauma and how EMDR works. Clinician will ensure that all questions or concerns are addressed, and the client has techniques to cope with anything that might arise during the process. Coping skills are introduced at this phase to reduce any disturbance in and outside of session.

3. Assessment: After identifying the event that will be reprocessed, also known as the ‘target’ the event will be assessed by identifying any images, beliefs, feelings, and body sensations that are linked to that event. 

4. Desensitization: Reprocessing of a target begins here by using BLS until there is no longer any disturbance associated with this event.

5. Installation: Once all disturbance is reduced, BLS is used to strengthen a positive belief that you want to associate with that target event until it feels completely true. 

6. Body Scan: Your clinician will ask you to hold in mind both the target event and the positive belief while doing a body scan from head to toe. If there is any additional disturbance in the body related to this target event, it is reprocessed with BLS. 

7. Closure: Clinician will close out session and ensure you feel grounded before the session ends. It is important to know that some target events may take multiple sessions to complete. A target is complete when you feel neutral about the event and no longer experience any emotional disturbance. 

8. Re-evaluation: Starting at the beginning of each session, clinician will check in about recently reprocessed target memories to ensure that distress is still low and the positive belief still feels true. Additionally, the treatment plan is then re-assessed to determine next steps.