Have you ever heard of EMDR? You’re not alone if you haven’t. For many, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) sounds like a bunch of words mixed together and it can feel pretty ambiguous on what it is exactly. For you Star Wars fans out there, it might sound akin to when Obi-Wan used the force to convince those stormtroopers to let them pass. However, EMDR is actually a powerful evidence-based therapy that has helped many people heal from trauma and emotional distress.
One of the worst and long-lasting impacts of trauma, emotionally distressing events, or adverse childhood experiences (such as being raised in a dysfunctional family) are the beliefs about oneself, others, and the world.
Examples of such negative beliefs are: I'm powerless; I don’t fit in; I’m unimportant; I’m vulnerable; I’m overwhelmed. The beauty of EMDR is that it helps you to let go of these negative core beliefs and to install a more positive and adaptive belief, such as: I’m okay as I am and can get my needs met; I can control what I can even when powerless; I can begin to learn that I am not always responsible for other’s feelings; I have value and self-worth regardless.
Let’s take a moment and unpack what exactly EMDR is.
The Origins of EMDR
In the late 1980’s, Dr. Francine Shapiro realized that moving her eyes side to side rapidly helped alleviate her distressing thoughts. Out of curiosity, she began to conduct a lot of research and eventually developed a structured therapeutic approach that incorporated these eye movements, which later turned into EMDR (Shapiro, 2018). Since then, EMDR has been extensively researched and is recognized as an effective evidence-based treatment for trauma.
What Exactly is EMDR?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a neurological form of therapy that engages the brain’s natural processes to heal from trauma and emotional distress, but in a much more efficient way than what might occur naturally.
At its core, EMDR involves recalling traumatic memories while simultaneously undergoing bilateral stimulation, such as side-to-side eye movements, tapping, and even auditory tones.
This bilateral stimulation helps to rapidly activate your problem solving processes, which also occurs during REM sleep, which is the stage of sleep where dreaming happens and your eyes are darting back and forth. Dreams are not very great at effectively processing trauma and emotional distress though, mainly because of all the random things that might come up. One moment you're the guest star on an episode of Sesame Street helping the Count introduce the number of the day and the next moment you are frantically running from some unknown danger only to be woken up in a panic! Not fun.
In EMDR, you are awake and focused on a specific problem and all of the negative and positive emotions, thoughts, sensations, and beliefs that are associated with it (Shapiro, 2018). Your brain is able to effectively work through the material.
It desensitizes you to all of the negative emotions and the beliefs about yourself, others, and the world that are rooted in the traumatic memory.
After the negative beliefs, sensations, thoughts, and emotions are desensitized, then a new, more positive and adaptive belief is installed.
Who is EMDR for Exactly?
EMDR is highly effective for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex trauma, anxiety, depression, and other conditions stemming from traumatic or emotionally distressing experiences. Oftentimes when people think about trauma, they think about what we call “big T trauma," such as an assault, natural disaster, car accident, or any other horrible event. As stated earlier though, EMDR has a primary focus on the negative beliefs about oneself that are rooted in the trauma. Because of this, EMDR is also highly effective at treating what we call “little t” trauma, such as humiliating childhood experiences, disappointments, and attachment wounds (Shaprio, 2018).
EMDR can also be a valuable addition to treating substance use disorders (SUD), alcohol use disorders (AUD), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), in that it can help desensitize how strong one’s urge to use is, or in the case of OCD, how distressing the obsession is. Again, for these disorders, other treatments, outside of EMDR, are likely still needed.
For those of you who have been going to therapy for years and you feel like you have gained as much insight as you can from traditional talk therapy, but you are still feeling stuck in these negative belief systems, depressive, perfectionistic, or anxious thought patterns, or in fight, flight, or freeze/shutdown responses to perceived physical or emotional danger, then I would encourage you to seek out an EMDR trained therapist to see if it might be a good fit for you in your journey towards healing!
Citations
Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). New York: Guilford Press.