EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – is an innovative method of psychotherapy that enhances people’s ability to resolve problems in day to day life by assisting them to attend to internal experiences and external stimuli at the same time.
Although EMDR started with a chance observation in 1987, EMDR procedures have since been extensively examined in controlled scientific studies and have been found to be effective for the treatment of specific symptoms and conditions.
EMDR is best known and best studied as a treatment to help resolve emotional distress arising from overwhelming life experiences such as sexual assault and other violent crimes, automobile and industrial accidents, combat trauma, airline and train crashes and natural disasters. Such events commonly lead to symptoms in adults such as phobias, panic attacks, nightmares, insomnia, substance abuse, and in children such as oppositional behavior, bed wetting, and sleep disturbances.
EMDR is also increasingly being used as part of the growing field of positive psychology to enhance performance for people at home, at work, in sports and in the performing arts, as well as diminishing symptoms of Attention Deficit Disorder.
HOW DOES EMDR WORK?
It is not fully known how EMDR works because neuroscience researchers are still exploring how the brain works. Indeed, how any method of psychotherapy works has yet to be established definitively. However, there is evidence for an innate adaptive information processing system that exists as part of human thinking and emotional self-regulation. Research suggests that when a person is very upset, the brain cannot process information as it normally does. Some traumatic events and recurring situations that provoke intense emotion becomes ‘frozen in time’, and ‘stuck’ in the information processing system. Present day internal and external reminders of these experiences often trigger a re-experiencing of sights, sounds, smells, thoughts, body sensations or emotions that can feel as intense as when first experienced. Such unresolved memories may have a profoundly negative impact on the way a person sees the world and relates to other people. Under the influence of such unresolved experiences, behavior tends to become inflexible and constricted to avoid painful re-experiencing.
EMDR appears to produce a direct effect on the way the brain processes upsetting material. Research suggests that attending to eye movements, auditory tones or hand taps as part of the EMDR procedures triggers an innate neuro-physiological mechanism known as “the investigatory response” which in turn leads to “adaptive information processing.” With “adaptive information processing” it is primarily the person’s own innate capacities, rather than the interpretations or thoughts of the therapist that lead to adaptive changes in thinking and emotional self-regulation.
With successful EMDR treatment, the upsetting experiences are worked through to “adaptive resolution.” The person receiving EMDR comes to understand that the event is in the past, realizes appropriately who or what was responsible for the event occurring, and feels more certain about present-day safety and the capacity to make good choices. What happened can still be remembered by the person, but with much less upset. The person finds that new, more flexible behaviors feel more possible and inviting.
Many types of therapy have similar goals. However, EMDR can be thought of as incorporating a neuro-physiologically-based process that allows a natural healing process to emerge. Clinical reports and analysis of multiple research studies suggest that EMDR treatment procedures initial effects more rapidly, permits a more rapid and complete working through of disturbance and has a lower drop out rate than more conventional forms of therapy.