What is EMDR?
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing.
It is a powerful psychotherapeutic treatment method that was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. EMDR is primarily used to treat individuals who have experienced traumatic events and is recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an effective treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Trauma is defined by the individual and all of us at some time will have experienced events that were traumatic to us, for example, loss/bereavement, accidents, assaults, bullying, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, natural disasters.
This list is by no means exhaustive but gives an indication of events that can contribute to debilitating mental health conditions. EMDR has been increasingly used to treat conditions, such as, anxiety, depression, phobias, and other psychological disorders that have resulted in adverse life events that have not been processed.
When a person is involved in a traumatic event, they may feel overwhelmed, and their brain may be unable to fully process what is going on. The memory of the event seems to become “stuck” so that it remains very intense and vivid. The person can re-experience what they saw, heard, and smelt and the full force of the distress they felt whenever the memory comes to mind.
‘When negative reactions and behaviours in the present can be tracked back to an earlier memory, we define those memories as ‘unprocessed’ – meaning that they are stored in the brain in a way that still holds the emotions, physical sensations, and beliefs that were experienced earlier in life.’ (Francine Shapiro)
EMDR aims to help the brain “unstick” and reprocess the memory properly so that it is no longer so intense. It also helps to desensitise the person to the emotional impact of the memory, so that they can think about the event without experiencing such strong feelings or negative beliefs attached to the event/s.
It does this by asking the person to recall the traumatic event whilst using bilateral stimulation, in either the form of eye movements, auditory or tactile stimulation. These side-to-side sensations seem to effectively stimulate the “stuck” processing system in the brain so that it can reprocess the information more like an ordinary memory, reducing its intensity (EMDR Association).
EMDR is proven to be an effective treatment model and in certain situations many individuals experience significant improvements in a short time. For those with more complex or multiple traumas the treatment can take much longer. However, evidence suggests that EMDR is the most efficient and rapid psychotherapeutic procedure for the treatment of traumatic memories and PTSD.