Is EMDR the right therapy for me?
You may have landed here because you’ve heard about the benefits of EMDR therapy and are curious about if it is right for you. Celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Prince Harry have reported publicly that EMDR has helped them heal from tumultuous childhoods and tragic situations. You may even know that EMDR therapy is the most researched evidence-based way to treat trauma. Organizations like the APA and the veterans administration have decided that EMDR therapy is the number one way to treat and heal from trauma.
But what is it?
EMDR is an eight phase therapy treatment that an individual can engage in with a trained clinician. First, the therapy begins like most therapies: with the therapist just simply getting to know the client and their history. Hopefully, rapport is built, and the client feels very safe to share all of the parts of their history that they maybe haven’t even explored before. Next, the therapist will teach the client some grounding and soothing techniques to help reduce distress. I find that my clients like to use these techniques before bed or before a meeting, or any other time they might be feeling anxious, fearful, or out of sorts. These techniques, like “Safe Place” and “Container”, are useful to anyone. But are especially useful to regain a sense of calm and presence after engaging in some deep therapeutic work.
Then, the therapist will test out how the client responds to bilateral stimulation. This can be done with eye movements where the clients eyes are looking side to side, while their head and body stays still. Or, with the use of handheld buzzers that vibrate alternately to produce sensation, first on one side of the body and then the other.
After this, it’s up to the therapist's clinical judgment to identify what targets might be most helpful for the client to reprocess. Targets can be anything from a moment of mild distress or anxiety, to a happy moment, or a deeply disturbing experience. All throughout the process, the therapist is monitoring the client for signs of distress or dissociation or ways the treatment might be affecting them. At all times, the client is in control and able to stop the treatment at any moment.
Finally, the goal of EMDR treatment is that the distress you feel in your mind and body is greatly reduced. Treatment ends when the client feels better - they are experiencing less distressing thoughts, less nightmares, less painful memories, less behaviors they aren’t proud of - and they can positively look forward to their future.
What is it like to do EMDR?
Clients often wonder if this treatment is similar to hypnosis. EMDR is not hypnosis. You are awake, alert, and aware throughout the entire time. Honestly, I’ve never been hypnotized or attempted to train on hypnosis because I struggle with the lack of control a person being hypnotized seems to have over themselves. I can’t imagine that this would feel safe for many people who have already experienced traumatic situations where a loss of control is present.
I often compare the EMDR experience to like having a daydream about your past. EMDRIA, the governing body over EMDR therapy, compares it to taking a train ride through your past or watching a movie of your past. At all times you can get off the train or pause the movie. The client is fully aware and in control.
How does it work?
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know, and neither does anyone else! Extensive research has been done to prove that EMDR is both safe and effective for most people. But, we can’t actually identify exactly how the healing happens. We can see that on functional MRI’s, bilateral stimulation lowers the activity in our amygdalas (emotional brain) and allows more activity to happen in our prefrontal cortex (logical brain).
Researchers theorize that the back-and-forth motion of your eyes mimics REM sleep, which is a stage of sleep where your brain is processing and storing information and that by instigating and imitating this process, we put your brain in its optimal state for healing. I often compare EMDR therapy to a walk in the woods; in that your feet taking steps are providing bilateral stimulation to your body, while your eyes are starting back-and-forth across the path to watch out for roots or rocks. If picturing yourself on a leisurely walk in the woods is appealing to you, you might enjoy the bilateral stimulation of EMDR. Some of my younger clients have reported feeling relaxed, and like their brain is getting a massage when receiving bilateral stimulation. Other clients report an immediate calming effect. Other clients feel nothing at all and usually we switch to a different therapy modality that appeals to them more.
What we do know is, it’s not magic. Just like a massage, a peaceful walk, or a warm beverage can soothe your nervous system, EMDR therapy also calm down your amygdala in your brain where your fight or flight responses are stored and provides soothing to your nervous system. It feels good.
While that good feeling for your brain is happening, we’re also discussing hard things.
Always making sure to do so in a safe and tolerable way, I gently guide my clients to exploring their past traumatic experiences. My clients don’t relive the past experience but rather observe and view it and look for ways the experience may have been stored incorrectly, or given them negative beliefs about themselves that simply are not true. Once these errors have been identified, they’re much easier for clients to correct and move forward from.
Beyond trauma, research shows EMDR is highly effective for anxiety, depression, OCD, and chronic pain.
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