EMDR therapy

EMDR therapy is the abbreviation for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It's a very long and complicated sounding name, I know, and while there is a lot of science and technical jargon involved in understanding it, actually experiencing it is rather simple and profoundly relieving. 

The science and technical jargon

 EMDR is an evidence-based method of psychotherapy that utilizes bilateral stimulation (ie both hemispheres of the brain) to desensitize events or negative beliefs that carry an emotional charge within us, re-process them with new insight, and integrate them back into the memory system without the emotional charge they once had. It typically takes less time to experience results than traditional methods of psychotherapy because of the way it utilizes the natural healing methods of the body. 

When a disturbing event occurs in one's life, it can get locked in the brain with details of the original experience. The EMDR process seems to stimulate the information and allow the brain to reprocess the event naturally. By re-programming or neutralizing these past experiences, we are able to move past them, let the emotional weight that they carry go, so that we can experience our present lives with a clean slate.

Once a memory or negative belief associated with the stressful event or trauma is re-processed, the individual often finds that they can recall the general event, but that it no longer carries emotional weight and doesn't include as many details as it once did. As a result, the beliefs associated with that memory, unconscious or not, are released and replaced with ones that fit the client's current life experience. 

Not as complicated as it sounds

Disturbing events can include anything from significant and isolated traumas to many repeated smaller incidents that our brain has processed as traumatic. Sometimes our brain and body store events or occurrences as traumas even though we don't remember them that way. Have you ever tried to explain a stressor in your life and said "your head and your heart can't agree"? Oftentimes what we can know rationally or intellectually doesn't transfer over to our body or core belief (what you just feel in your bones). 

Have you ever been able to rationally think your way out of an unwanted thought or behavior pattern, but found that it kept showing up or creeping back in despite your best efforts? It's not for lack of trying, I know, I've been there. You could be doing all the hard work, all the right things, but some thought patterns or beliefs hold on because they have been programmed into our brain at the time of experience and our current, rational adult experience can't access it to change it. 

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EMDR seems to be a great option for people who have pursued personal growth work in the past, either on their own or with another therapist, and found that the issues they wanted to overcome or figure out kept creeping back in. This is often one of the best indicators that there is something else there that is just outside of your consciousness, and still effecting your life.

This method provides a straightforward and arguably faster way to unblock and re-organize whatever that something may be. It can be tedious and tiring to repeat the same history and stories over and over again to a new therapist. EMDR doesn't require the same time-intensive history taking that other methods do, nor does the therapist need to know every little detail about the issue in order for the therapy to be effective.