The Many Benefits of EMDR Therapy

How do the eyes help you resolve post-traumatic stress? Photo: v2osk

When you’ve had a traumatic event, you naturally want to get quick, thorough relief from your symptoms. You might have heard that EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy provides that kind of relief and doesn’t take years of therapy to achieve. That is also appealing, because you want to make the most of your hard-earned dollars. There are many benefits to EMDR therapy, but people often misconceptions about it. In this post, I explain what EMDR therapy is, some of its benefit, and what to expect (as well as what NOT to expect).

What is EMDR therapy?

Psychologist Francine Shapiro developed EMDR therapy in the late 1980s, after going for a walk while upset and noticing that the bilateral movement of her footsteps helped her feel good at the end. Exercise is good for stress, but this was better than she expected to feel. She started figuring out what about this experience helped her, and came up with a therapeutic approach out of it.

This structured eight-phase therapeutic approach includes history-taking, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and reevaluation. What people are most interested in, and think the whole therapy consists of, is the desensitization.

I’ll explain desensitization in a minute. First, let’s address that the nature of the trauma and level of how your functioning (i.e., your ability to work, go to school, relate to others, etc.) influence how long the therapy takes. People often want to know “how many sessions will it take?” The answer depends on numerous factors like these. That often gets overlooked and people expect to get better in just a few sessions. That’s possible, but not always the rule!

What happens in an EMDR therapy session?

First comes history-gathering and building rapport between us. Depending on the number of traumatic incidents, your ability to be emotionally present while talking about them, and your current psychological functioning, this might take one or more sessions. During that time, I observe what happens as you recall the past, including physical and emotional shifts. This helps me see how much preparation we should do before desensitizing the memories.

Preparation might include skill-building, including emotional regulation, improving physical self-care, and learning how to prioritize your own well-being. It might also include addressing dissociation and improving coping skills. If you’re abusing substances or actively considering hurting yourself or others, we need to help you get stable before opening up painful wounds from the past. We can also bring up positive memories or feeling states and use bilateral stimulation to activate those in your memory network, which is referred to as “resourcing.”

Desensitization

We then set up “targets” for reprocessing, which are the worst aspects of the traumatic memories, how you feel and think about them now, and how they feel physically. We use these targets for desensitization of the memories. We use the bilateral stimulation to revisit the memories in the present, so you become less emotionally and physically reactive while thinking about them. Along the way, you might experience some increased physical and emotional arousal, but usually as we desensitize the memories, they become less powerful and more neutral. That’s the main goal.

The targets are upsetting memories or experiences you bring up while focusing on external stimuli -- usually rapid bilateral eye movements guided by the therapist's hand. The bilateral stimulation can also be movement or sounds. Online, I use a program that shows a ball that goes back and forth on the screen; you follow the ball with your eyes while thinking about the target.

These eye movements mimic the natural processing that occurs during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. The theory is that this bilateral stimulation helps the brain reprocess traumatic memories, reducing their emotional charge and allowing you to integrate these experiences in a healthier way. However, the exact mechanisms of how it works are still being studied.

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Benefits of EMDR Therapy

This approach has been researched for many years and helped people worldwide. While it’s not the perfect fit for everyone, it has many benefits that help clients tremendously. These include:

·         Lessens the emotional and physical intensity of traumatic memories and associated negative beliefs;

·         Can reduce symptoms of PTSD, trauma-related disorders, and anxiety;

·         Helps you process and integrate traumatic memories so they don’t feel like they just happened;

·         Often takes less time to “work” than traditional talk therapies (although this varies, as noted above);

·         Reduces avoidance of things that remind you of the trauma (“triggers”) and hypervigilance (feeling constantly on guard);

·         Empowers you to actively participate in your healing;

·         Encourages self-efficacy (feeling you’re in charge of your own life);

·         Changes how you think about yourself and the world;

·         Can improve your self-esteem and help you see the world more realistically;

·         Works on non-verbal processing, which is important because trauma lives in the body and needs to be released physically as well as emotionally and cognitively;

·         Reduces the chance that you’ll be retraumatized by the memory because you’re in a safe, caring environment and bringing the adult part of you back to visit the younger, more helpless part of you that was hurt;

·         Helps you integrate fragmented or dissociated memories, emotions, and sensations associated with trauma, which can help you feel more whole; and

·         The positive effects tend to last over time, even after therapy ends.

EMDR therapy is very powerful and useful in trauma treatment, but it also can be used with other extreme emotional experiences like grief, anxiety, and anger. It’s also versatile; we can bring in different therapeutic modalities like somatic (body-based) techniques to strengthen its effectiveness. That said, individual responses to EMDR may vary; not everyone will experience the same benefits. It’s best when the therapist tailors the therapy to your specific needs and circumstances. If you’re interested in learning more about trauma treatment, please call me or click the button below!