What is EMDR Therapy?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing- commonly known as EMDR- is a mental health therapy method. This method involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories. EMDR therapy doesn’t require talking in detail about a distressing issue. EMDR instead focuses on changing the emotions, thoughts or behaviors that result from a distressing experience (trauma). EMDR’s goal is to help you heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences. EMDR treats mental health conditions that happen because of memories from traumatic events in your past. It’s best known for its role in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but its use is expanding to include treatment of many other conditions. EMDR is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.
When you undergo EMDR, you access memories of a trauma event in very specific ways. Combined with eye movements, bilateral movements like tapping and guided instructions, accessing those memories helps you reprocess what you remember from the negative event.
That reprocessing helps “repair” the mental injury from that memory. Remembering what happened to you will no longer feel like reliving it, and the related feelings will be much more manageable.
What conditions and problems does EMDR treat?
The most widespread use of EMDR is for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Mental healthcare providers also use it in the treatment of the following conditions:
Anxiety disorders: Generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobias and social anxiety/phobia.
Depression disorders: Major depressive disorder, persistent depressive disorder and illness-related depression.
Obsessive-compulsive disorders: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), body dysmorphic disorder and hoarding disorder.
Trauma disorders: Acute stress disorder, PTSD and adjustment disorder.
Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
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EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
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Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.