What is EMDR?
If you’ve ever seen a clip of EMDR it can look very strange; someone briskly tapping their own shoulders or moving their eyes from left to right. How can that possibly help? Or be a legitimate therapy? In fact, EMDR is one of the NICE-recommended therapies for trauma/PTSD as it has a wide research base demonstrating its effectiveness.
As we learn more it seems to make sense. Struggling with anxiety, trauma or low mood in the present? Have nightmares or flashbacks back to the past? In EMDR we understand that these symptoms are caused by early memories that are unprocessed or have got ‘stuck’ in our heads with all the feelings and thoughts that we had at the time. So if we find ourselves in a similar situation, or even not sometimes, we can quite unconsciously activate these early responses. EMDR can stop these symptoms as it helps the brain process these past memories where it was not able to do this on its own. This is where the eye movements or tapping come in.
Developed in the 1980s by American psychologist Dr Francine Shapiro, EMDR was originally focused solely as a treatment for PTSD but has now been shown to be effective for a wide range of difficulties including anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, chronic pain and sleep difficulties.
What Does it Involve?
EMDR can help process trauma faster than other therapies. Some people also prefer it as you do not have to go into as much detail about the past as some therapies, such as with trauma-focused CBT.
In the sessions we will start by completing a detailed assessment, moving towards identifying which symptoms you want to address and any memories that we need to target.
Depending on how you are coping currently we may introduce some new stabilisation techniques to help you with your symptoms straightaway. We may then move onto actually processing the memories from the past. This involves recalling the memory whilst doing eye movements or tapping.
Intrigued? Have a look at the video to see an example of processing in action.
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Fern’s Story
Fern was suffering from PTSD following a car accident last year. Since the accident she had suffered from intrusive memories of the day, nightmares and felt very anxious about driving. She constantly felt on an emotional rollercoaster
Using EMDR she learnt how to better soothe herself. She began processing memories identified in the assessment including witnessing car accident as a young child.
As she worked through her linked memories Fern’s intrusive memories and nightmares reduced in frequency. She felt able to drive again and her anxiety and low mood improved significantly.