About EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful treatment that helps people recover from traumatic events. This psychotherapy model is recommended by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) as an effective treatment for Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma. It is highly researched, and evidence based.
Apart from PTSD, EMDR can also help with variety of issues such as anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, depression, abuse, sleep disturbance, low self-esteem, grief, pain, and addictions.
In the late 1980s, Francine Shapiro, PhD, discovered that disturbing thoughts and emotions became less disturbing, and an adaptive resolution was reached together with spontaneous eye movements.
EMDR uses eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation such as tapping or tones to activate healthy processing of distressing events and resume a natural healing process.
Most of the time, our body routinely manages new information and experiences, and adaptively processes them, which often occurs spontaneously in REM or dream sleep.
However, when an experience is traumatic or distressing, our brain prioritises survival and new information gets stored in neural networks that are fragmented, rigid, frozen in time, and isolated from other networks. These trauma networks lose the ability to access other information. Any reminder of these events easily triggers thoughts, behaviours, feelings, and sensations in their original form.
During EMDR, the use of bilateral stimulation helps the brain reprocess the distressing experiences in the direction of health and healing. The trauma networks loosen up and integrate with new, adaptive information, keeping what is important, discarding or letting go of the rest and reaching an adaptive resolution.
EMDR helps people to release from dysfunctional ties with the past. They become less consumed by the past and less triggered by it. It allows them to respond to present situations more consciously and live more fully in the present.