EMDR Therapy – Everything You Need to Know
EMDR Therapy – Everything You Need to Know
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a kind of psychotherapy that allows us to treat the symptoms as well as emotional stress which comes from distorting life experiences. A lot of studies show that through using EMDR therapy, individuals are able to experience the advantages of psychotherapy which used to take a considerable time to make a difference. It is mostly presumed that severe emotional disturbance might require considerable time to heal.
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR therapy suggests that the mind is able to heal from mental trauma just like the body gets recovered from physical-force trauma. As your hand gets injured, your cells work to make a clot. If the wound is irritated again, the pain will be there again. Healing resumes once the wound isn't irritated.
EMDR shows that these kinds of events happen with mental processes. The information of the brain's system is processed through your mental health. If the system gets blocked by a traumatic event, the emotional wound grows, which results in intense suffering. As the block gets removed, the process of healing continues. Using the procedures and the protocols in the EMDR therapy sessions, clinicians aid the clients in activating their natural process of healing.
Scientific Evidence for EMDR Therapy
Numerous studies have demonstrated the positive effects of EMDR therapy. Some scientific studies suggest that around 90% of victims of single trauma don't have PTSD after going for only three 90-min EMDR sessions. Another research suggests that all mental trauma victims, as well as 77% of the multiple mental health trauma patients, did not have any diagnosis in the follow up for the PTSD after doing only six sessions of the EMDR. On the whole, organizations such as the WHO, the American Psychiatric Association, and others call EMDR to be an effective treatment against trauma and concerning events.
Given all the recognition as a renowned treatment of mental trauma, you can see how this therapy will be effective in managing those memories that are the cause behind low self-esteem, powerlessness, and other issues which bring them for therapy. Over a hundred thousand clinicians across the globe use this therapy. Over the past two decades, millions of people have been treated by it successfully.
How Does it Take Place?
The therapy consists of eight phases. Bilateral stimulation – eye movement – is used in one part of the treatment session. After the professional has found out the memory for targeting, they ask the client to hold aspects of that thought or event in their mind and use their eyes for tracking the therapist's hand when it moves back and forth across the visual field of the client. With this, internal associations take place, and the client starts processing the disturbing events or thoughts.
In a successful therapy session, the meaning of that painful event gets transformed on a mental level. For example, a rape victim will shift from the feeling of self-disgust and horror towards holding a belief that they survived and are strong.
Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients get in the therapy take place not a lot from the interpretation of the professional but from the accelerated emotional and intellectual processes of the client. The net result is that the client feels empowered by those experiences that were once disturbing for them. Their internal wounds are not closed but transformed. As a result of the therapeutic process of the EMDY, the thoughts, behavior, and feelings of the clients are all indicators of resolution and emotional health without going into a lot of detail like in other therapies.
Phase 1 – the Treatment Plan and History
The therapist will first be reviewing your history and decide your position in the treatment. The evaluating phase also involves a talk session for your trauma and identification of the potential traumatic memories for treating specifically.
Phase 2 – Preparation
The therapist will be helping you know about different ways through which you can cope with the psychological or emotional stress that you experience. Stress management techniques like mindfulness and deep breathing might be used.
Phase 3 – Assessment of the Client
In the third phase of the EMDR session, the therapist will be able to identify the different memories that get targeted and all the related components like the physical sensations which are stimulated as you focus on the event for the target memory.
Phase 4 to Phase 7 – Treatment Plan
The therapist will start utilizing the EMDR therapy techniques for treating the targeted memories, events, or thoughts. In these sessions, you will need to bring your focus to the triggering memories. They will also ask you to follow certain eye movements as you think about the moments that disturb you. This bilateral stimulation might also involve other movements and taps that get mixed in, which depends on the case.
After this kind of stimulation, the therapist will be asking you to allow your mind to get blank and instead note the feelings and the thoughts you have spontaneously. As you figure out those thoughts, the therapist might ask you to focus on the traumatic memory again or shift your focus to another thought.
As you become distressed, the therapist will aid in bringing you back to the current moment prior to moving towards another traumatic memory. With time, that stress over the specific event, memory, and thought will start getting faded.
Phase 8 – Evaluation of the Treatment
In the eighth phase, you will be reassessing your progress made after these therapy sessions. Your therapist will be evaluating the treatment to note the difference as well.
Final Word
These are some facts about EMDR therapy – what it is, how it came to use, and how the treatment session goes. The idea is to help the individual getting triggered by the painful event not get negatively impacted by it anymore. This way, the individual is able to think about a certain event without the associated negative emotional re-experiencing.