EMDR: Transforming Pain into Power!
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and it is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distresses that are the result of disturbing or traumatic life experiences. Unlike many other psychotherapies that heavily rely on talk therapy, it utilizes a mind-body connection and stimulates both hemispheres of the brain thereby accessing traumatic memories, which are generally stored in the right side of the brain that are more difficult to access with traditional talk therapy alone. Also, the mind-body connection helps to access memories stored in the body.
Our brains and bodies have a natural self-healing mechanism. EMDR utilizes that mechanism to promote healing and mental health following exposure to traumatic event(s). People with a history of trauma are tuned in to look for danger even long after the danger has passed. This is known as a “trigger”. Triggers are when you have an oversized emotional reaction to an event in the present because of a trauma in the past. Triggers can be sensations like a smell or sound or an association with a person or place that is connected to a traumatic memory. I see triggers as an opportunity to heal a past trauma and a clue that trauma may be at the root of the emotional reaction.
Who Could Benefit from EMDR?
Anybody can benefit, but it has traditionally been used for people diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) or cPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). EMDR is a therapist’s powertool that can help people with PTSD/cPTSD access and process buried traumas that resist other treatments. It is helpful for single incident traumas such as 9/11, a sexual assault, a car accident, or unresolved grief over the sudden death of a loved one, or for repeated, chronic, complex traumas such as physical or sexual abuse of children within a family. The goal of EMDR is to transform the negative beliefs and feelings about yourself and the event into realizing your own strengths and resiliency in surviving the event. It is helpful if you have access to your feelings about the trauma. You do not need to remember the full details of the trauma because traumatic memory is often stored in a fragmented form such as bodily sensation, sound, emotion, or a split second in time.
What to Expect in a EMDR Session?
EMDR either uses eye movements or other bilateral stimulation which can be tapping on your legs or arms (especially popular during this pandemic era of remote EMDR). The therapist will take a history of your life and you will jointly begin to find “targets” of what traumatic memories or issues you would like to focus on. Then, in the EMDR that I practice, you will identify “resources”: figures either real or imagined that are nurturing, protective, and wise or moments where you felt strong, resourceful and in control in preparation for the trauma treatment. Then, the desensitization and reprocessing of the target memory begins. You hold the memory in your mind while using the bilateral stimulation and then you begin to process the memory and the disturbing feelings and thoughts associated with this memory in addition to where these feelings are stored in the body.
The goal of the reprocessing with bilateral stimulation is to move through difficult emotions, release the body sensations of where the trauma is stored, and to change your negative belief into a more adaptive positive belief about yourself. In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional and physical level. For instance, a victim of childhood sexual assault shifts from feeling dirty and ashamed to holding the firm belief that, “I survived it and I am strong.”
Benefits of EMDR
Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR are from the client’s own processing of the events rather than the therapist’s insights. Also, you, the patient, has control over the therapeutic process, which is something that survivors lack during the trauma. The therapist’s job is to guide and move the client’s own self-healing mechanism forward. The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered not only by the process of EMDR, but also by their new understanding of the traumatic experiences. Your wounds have not just closed, they have been transformed. As a natural outcome of a successful EMDR therapeutic process, the clients’ thoughts, feelings and behavior about the disturbing events will radically change to benefit them and make them feel stronger and more powerful and in control of themselves.
