Healing After Trauma: What is “EMDR”?
EMDR. Maybe you’ve heard this term floating around. You’ve wondered – is this hot new therapy just a fad or is it actually a useful tool in healing?
What is EMDR?
EMDR = Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
The name of the therapy really does describe what it is, and once we break it down a little bit, you’ll see what I mean.
EMDR was developed in the late eighties in the United States, and was initially used for PTSD with combat veterans, although now we know that it can be enormously helpful for other mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, complicated grief and other distressing life events. EMDR is still largely associated with being a trauma treatment, but let’s take a look at what trauma actually is.
What is trauma?
Trauma is a wound. It’s our response to a distressing event, and how that response affects us moving forward. Trauma can be things like “Big T” events: sexual assault, major car accident, or physical assault. Trauma is also “little t” events: bullying, feeling of betrayal or neglect. Trauma can be a one-time event, or it can be an accumulation of events over time. It actually doesn’t matter how it is categorized; what is important is how the distressing event has affected YOU.
When we have a physical trauma such as cutting our finger while cooking, or breaking a bone - we treat the wound, we put a band-aid on it, or we go to the doctor and get a cast. And then we let the body heal itself, because the body knows what to do. When we experience psychological distress, our brain also works to process things. Our brain has a similar system to the body that naturally moves towards healing. Sometimes however, things get a little stuck in the information-processing system, particularly when faced with distressing events that affect our sense of safety or self-worth.
Now, we know a lot about the brain, but it’s said that there is even more that we don’t know. We know that during REM sleep (rapid eye movement), our brain is working hard to process the day’s events, and file it away into teeny tiny brain filing cabinets (imagine that!).
How does EMDR work?
Scientists who have studied the efficacy of EMDR hypothesize that during the treatment, (reprocessing) the same mechanisms as REM sleep are activated, through controlled eye-movements done in the safety of your therapist's office. The result is that the traumatic response is desensitized. It enables the brain to organize the initial event in a way that feels much less traumatic, so you can move forward without the crippling self-beliefs that the trauma left you with.
Now although the name of the therapy implies the use of eye-movements, we can also achieve the same effect (what is referred to as “bi-lateral stimulation”) in other ways...by light tapping, handheld buzzers or sound moving between two headphones. Eye-movements was the original method, and so this has stuck as part of the name of the treatment.
What can EMDR treatment do? Is it effective?
You can expect to feel as though you can move forward in your life; without re-living the trauma or distressing event. Clients also report relief in associated symptoms such as anxiety, depression, self-esteem and attachment issues. EMDR doesn’t erase your history, but enables you to view your history and your self without distress and negative self-beliefs.
EMDR is a highly effective therapy for anyone struggling with past experiences of trauma/distress and present day complications of that distress. If you’re curious if this is the right fit for you, please contact us at info@hellowellbe.com.
More more information on EMDR, check out follow up post on “Debunking the Myths of EMDR”.