By Brad Shamis, Ph.D
Licensed Psychologist
Licensed Psychologist
“Though it may seem like magic. EMDR and its positive results can not be ignored. Based on testimonials from therapists, EMDR has sometimes been known to work in dramatic fashion.”
It's fascinating, provocative and relatively new: and we're not completely sure why it works. It's EMDR: Eye movement, sensitization and reprocessing. A client-centered therapy, EMDR sometimes produces rapid and often dramatic change, especially for survivors of trauma.
Basically, EMDR combines images, sensory perception and related thoughts. The subject concentrates on a therapist's repeated back and forth hand motion. The treatment exposes the patient to traumatic memories, while it simultaneously desensitizes neural messages. The end result can be decreased anxiety and depression, and replacement of these negative feelings with more positive, reinforcing messages. More than simple desensitization though, EMDR is considered to be rapid mental information processing.
EMDR was discovered by accident: the improvements it offers are not completely understood. In recent years, however, EMDR has developed an enthusiastic following in the psychotherapy community, because this mysterious therapeutic innovation offers great hope.
EMDR was discovered in 1987 by Francine Shapiro, a graduate student studying psychology, while she was walking in a park in California. Shapiro, a former high school teacher, had developed cancer in 1979: moved to California: divorced: and studied meditation, imagery, hypnosis, and NLP (neurolinguistic programing, another therapy technique). Beset by disturbing thoughts and old memories as she walked, Shapiro began moving her eyes rapidly back and forth, and found the thoughts and memories has disappeared.
This chance discovery led to further experimentation. Initially, Shapiro worked with volunteers, later she did a formal study with survivors of rape, childhood sexual abuse and war. Her subjects suffered from flashbacks and sleep disturbances, and had low self-esteem and relationship problems. In what became her doctoral thesis, Shapiro reported that her subjects' memories had lost their negative impact and that positive self-statements were significantly more believable after only a single 60-minute session.
Thus began Shapiro's journey to promote the treatment and conduct further research to validate it, including experimentation with other behaviorists and publication of case studies. It was a hard road to acceptance that was not without some understandable skepticism. Now thousands of therapists, including myself, have been trained in EMDR. It is a standard treatment at more than a dozen VA medical centers. Although research may be lagging behind clinical application, this is not unusual in the realm of new and potentially revolutionary psychotherapeutic treatments. It may seem somewhat preposterous to think that simply flickering one's eyes back and forth while calling up trauma will result in a cure.
Actually, the process is more complex than that: many components in addition to high clinical standards are needed for full effectiveness.
Though it may seem like magic, EMDR and its positive results can not be ignored. Based on testimonials from therapists, EMDR has sometimes been known to work in dramatic fashion. Shapiro believes that EMDR activates a neuropsychological survival mechanism that permits people to resume their lives after sever trauma. She also calls the method, “accelerated information processing,” to explain the sometimes remarkably fast clinical results), and believes it may allow survival-related data to be rapidly processed, perhaps similar to what happens during rapid-eye-movement stages of sleep. In short, EMDR is thought to quickly open pathways within the brain (pathways which may not be as quickly accessed through conventional therapy), and to release mental blocks (an aftereffect of trauma) caused by brain chemistry changes.
The relationship between eye movement and the neural action is largely a mystery Shapiro theorizes that the traumatic memories frozen in the brain are quickly thawed by the eye movements. This thawed “memory package” then reconnects to the rest of the brain, from which it was previously isolated.
One compelling outcome of EMDR treatment is a reassuring realization, sometimes philosophical, sometimes spiritual, of a greater power or another dimension, often ending with patients experiencing a peaceful, nonthreatening visualization. It is here that EMDR becomes especially intriguing. Based on reports, the experience of each person successfully treated is unique, while outcomes are similar: decreased levels of anxiety, depression and flashbacks, and replacement of these with something more positive.
It's fascinating, provocative and relatively new: and we're not completely sure why it works. It's EMDR: Eye movement, sensitization and reprocessing. A client-centered therapy, EMDR sometimes produces rapid and often dramatic change, especially for survivors of trauma.
Basically, EMDR combines images, sensory perception and related thoughts. The subject concentrates on a therapist's repeated back and forth hand motion. The treatment exposes the patient to traumatic memories, while it simultaneously desensitizes neural messages. The end result can be decreased anxiety and depression, and replacement of these negative feelings with more positive, reinforcing messages. More than simple desensitization though, EMDR is considered to be rapid mental information processing.
EMDR was discovered by accident: the improvements it offers are not completely understood. In recent years, however, EMDR has developed an enthusiastic following in the psychotherapy community, because this mysterious therapeutic innovation offers great hope.
EMDR was discovered in 1987 by Francine Shapiro, a graduate student studying psychology, while she was walking in a park in California. Shapiro, a former high school teacher, had developed cancer in 1979: moved to California: divorced: and studied meditation, imagery, hypnosis, and NLP (neurolinguistic programing, another therapy technique). Beset by disturbing thoughts and old memories as she walked, Shapiro began moving her eyes rapidly back and forth, and found the thoughts and memories has disappeared.
This chance discovery led to further experimentation. Initially, Shapiro worked with volunteers, later she did a formal study with survivors of rape, childhood sexual abuse and war. Her subjects suffered from flashbacks and sleep disturbances, and had low self-esteem and relationship problems. In what became her doctoral thesis, Shapiro reported that her subjects' memories had lost their negative impact and that positive self-statements were significantly more believable after only a single 60-minute session.
Thus began Shapiro's journey to promote the treatment and conduct further research to validate it, including experimentation with other behaviorists and publication of case studies. It was a hard road to acceptance that was not without some understandable skepticism. Now thousands of therapists, including myself, have been trained in EMDR. It is a standard treatment at more than a dozen VA medical centers. Although research may be lagging behind clinical application, this is not unusual in the realm of new and potentially revolutionary psychotherapeutic treatments. It may seem somewhat preposterous to think that simply flickering one's eyes back and forth while calling up trauma will result in a cure.
Actually, the process is more complex than that: many components in addition to high clinical standards are needed for full effectiveness.
Though it may seem like magic, EMDR and its positive results can not be ignored. Based on testimonials from therapists, EMDR has sometimes been known to work in dramatic fashion. Shapiro believes that EMDR activates a neuropsychological survival mechanism that permits people to resume their lives after sever trauma. She also calls the method, “accelerated information processing,” to explain the sometimes remarkably fast clinical results), and believes it may allow survival-related data to be rapidly processed, perhaps similar to what happens during rapid-eye-movement stages of sleep. In short, EMDR is thought to quickly open pathways within the brain (pathways which may not be as quickly accessed through conventional therapy), and to release mental blocks (an aftereffect of trauma) caused by brain chemistry changes.
The relationship between eye movement and the neural action is largely a mystery Shapiro theorizes that the traumatic memories frozen in the brain are quickly thawed by the eye movements. This thawed “memory package” then reconnects to the rest of the brain, from which it was previously isolated.
One compelling outcome of EMDR treatment is a reassuring realization, sometimes philosophical, sometimes spiritual, of a greater power or another dimension, often ending with patients experiencing a peaceful, nonthreatening visualization. It is here that EMDR becomes especially intriguing. Based on reports, the experience of each person successfully treated is unique, while outcomes are similar: decreased levels of anxiety, depression and flashbacks, and replacement of these with something more positive.
