What is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)?
When someone experiences things which are difficult, disturbing or intense in nature, they have essentially experienced trauma. Clinicians break Psychological trauma down into (2) categories:
Large “T” traumas are life experiences which clinicians consider necessary in order to diagnose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Examples include:
Car accidents
Job loss
Combat
Loss of a loved one, divorce
Catastrophic illnesses i.e. cancer
Physical, mental, emotional or sexual abuse
Small “t” traumas are more common incidents or experiences that occur in our daily lives that make us feel unsafe, unloved or feel as if we’ve lost control over some aspect of our lives. Examples include:
Bullying
Verbal abuse by peers in school, home or work settings
Losses of any kind
Our brain works like a software program that aides us in making sense of the experiences that feel senseless. Francine Shapiro who developed EMDR therapy describes this software program as the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) system in the brain. The AIP helps us in processing difficult, disturbing and emotionally intense memories, images, etc. During Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, our brains attempt to re-process things that have happened to us in our waking/conscious state. Then, the brain reprocesses the events, images, or memories so that they no longer bother us. This allows us to move past the incident in a mental/emotional sense. Francine Shapiro asserts that most of the difficult things that happen to us get re-processed naturally in our brain in what she describes as “adaptive resolution”.
EMDR therapy is a therapeutic approach that replicates our brain’s own natural healing process. EMDR jump starts the brain’s Adaptive Information Processing system to resolve the blockage that occurs when actual physical matter accumulates in the deep folds and recesses of the brain when trauma happens to the individual.
By replicating Bi-lateral stimulation through eye movements, tones, or tactile modalities, the blockage can be dissolved so that the memories, events, images can be stored properly into the neural networks of the brain. EMDR therapy reprocesses the data so that the individual can respond to future events and experiences in an adaptive fashion rather than a dysfunctional one. Past memories, events, or images no longer hold the raw emotional pain that they did before EMDR therapy.
TAKE AWAY POINTS:
Your brain heals itself – naturally.
You are in control. Greg facilitates processing your traumatic event/memory, but you elect when to start and stop the therapy.
No long explanation of your difficult experience/memory is required. You do not have to say much or go into a lot of detail.
The healing is permanent. Once the memories are processed, it is done.
Processing difficult or traumatic memories with EMDR can be accomplished in markedly fewer sessions than traditional talk therapy.