Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) refers to an interactive psychotherapy technique used to relieve psychological stress. Gradually, the therapist will guide you to change your thoughts to more pleasant ones. Some therapists use alternatives to finger movements, such as tapping hands or feet or musical tones. While the client focuses on the disturbing event, the therapist will begin a series of eye movements, sounds, or touches from side to side.
The customer will be guided to notice what comes to mind after each series. They may experience changes in perception or changes in images, feelings, or beliefs about the event. A typical EMDR session will cause the client to remember conscious images of traumatic events, including smells, sights, tastes and smells. By inducing the recall of distressing events and diverting attention from their emotional consequences, EMDR in some respects borrows the basic principles used in prolonged exposure therapy, the gold-standard behavioral psychotherapeutic treatment of PTSD.
EMDR works like sequential processing, so when the correct target is processed, subsequent stressors will also be addressed. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a psychotherapy that uses left-right (bilateral) rhythmic stimulation to help people recover from trauma or other distressing life experiences. During EMDR therapy, the client attends to emotionally disturbing material in brief sequential doses while simultaneously focusing on an external stimulus. Therapists who wish to offer EMDR can complete approved training to become EMDR-trained physicians.
Although clients can feel relief almost immediately with EMDR, it is just as important to complete all eight phases of treatment as it is to complete an entire course of antibiotic treatment. Shapiro (1995, 200) hypothesizes that EMDR therapy facilitates access to the traumatic memory network, thereby improving information processing, with new associations forged between traumatic memory and more adaptive memories or information. It offers guided EMDR sessions in combination with bilateral visual stimulation to help people solve difficult problems. According to the results, EMDR provided via the Internet still helped to alleviate mental health symptoms.
Given the worldwide recognition as an effective treatment for trauma, you can easily see how EMDR therapy would be effective in treating the “everyday memories” that are why people have low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, and all the myriad problems that lead them to therapy. The goal of EMDR therapy is to fully process traumatic experiences that cause problems and to include new ones that are needed for complete health. Simply put, an EMDR therapist does this by guiding you through a series of bilateral (side to side) eye movements as you recall traumatic or triggering experiences in small segments, until those memories no longer cause distress. While you can work with a therapist on EMDR techniques to help with symptoms associated with trauma, keep in mind that only certain levels of mental health professionals can provide an official diagnosis of mental illnesses or disorders, such as PTSD.
EMDR certification requires having an advanced mental health license, taking several classroom classes and direct application of EMDR and multiple sessions with an EMDR supervisor.
