Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an information processing therapy in which rapid-eye movements (or pulses or tones) are induced while the individual focuses on a disturbing memory, feeling, image, or body sensation associated with a past traumatic event or a current disturbing issue. Then the client is instructed to let new material become the focus of the next set of dual attention. This sequence of dual attention and personal association is repeated many times in the session, until the material is “reprocessed”.
During EMDR clients may experience intense emotions, but by the end of the session most people report a great reduction in the level of disturbance. Clients not only access and work through traumatic memories, but also integrate new, more positive concepts – what they would like to believe about themselves, others, or life instead of the reactive, negative beliefs they likely took on automatically at the time of the upsetting incident.
Trauma can occur from events such as accidents, natural disasters, operations, deaths, and war. Traumatic situations also arise from hurtful, abusive behaviors that are intentional or neglectful. What makes something traumatic for someone is that it damages one’s health, self-esteem, safety, sanity, effectiveness, or comfort with intimacy.
When something traumatic happens, it often can get frozen in time, locked in the nervous system with the original image, thoughts, sounds, smells, feelings, etc. The old material can get triggered over and over again because the trauma is stored in the brain in an isolated memory network, preventing learning from taking place. As long as it remains unprocessed, it is likely to produce disturbing symptoms such as anxiety, hypervigilance, intrusive recollections, nightmares, depression, emotional numbness, and avoidance of anything associated with the trauma.
In another part of the brain, in a separate network, is new information that can be used to help process and resolve the old disturbing memories. The old problems just need to be linked up and integrated with new learning, so that the reservoir of negative emotional material can be drained, and new adaptive beliefs realized. While there are many ways the brain is able to reprocess and integrate traumatic memories, EMDR can speed up this process – removing excessive fear and emotional upset surrounding a past trauma so that you come to regard it as a memory with little or no emotional charge.
EMDR was developed in the 1980s and integrates elements of many effective psychotherapies in its structured protocols that are designed to maximize treatment effects. These therapies include psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, interpersonal, experiential, and body-centered therapies. Research has consistently shown that EMDR can be a highly efficient and rapid treatment for post traumatic stress. EMDR has been approved by the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other organizations as a treatment of choice for PTSD.