Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR Therapy, was created by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the late 1980's. 

While she was walking in a park one day, Francine made the discovery that eye movements lessened the charge of distressing emotions and negative thoughts. 

She began to experiment and created a protocol, and initially tested it on people with PTSD symptoms.

Her standard protocol was found to be very helpful for people who had experienced overwhelming traumas such as being in a war zone, and assaults (single incident trauma). 

Basic EMDR is a 40 hour training, with 10 hours of consultation. 

Single incident trauma is one bad event that happens one time, and feels life threatening. Examples of this are surviving a natural disaster, surviving a fire, experiencing an assault, being mugged, being in a car accident, waking up during a medical procedure, etc.  

Having an experience where you believe you might die can create PTSD symptoms, such as nightmares, flashbacks, re-living and re-experiencing the trauma, and avoidance of situations that make you think of the trauma (such as driving or going to the doctor).  

Over 30 controlled studies have demonstrated success in eliminating PTSD symptoms using EMDR Therapy. The EMDR therapy standard protocol has a high success rate for treating single-incident trauma, with some studies reporting that 84–90% of patients no longer have PTSD symptoms after three 90-minute sessions.

EMDR Therapy has been so well researched that it is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma in the Practice Guidelines of the American Psychiatric Association, by the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, as well as the World Health Organization. 

EMDR Therapy has been demonstrated to be effective not only with eye movements, but with alternating bilateral stimulation to opposite sides of the body. EMDR can be done with electronic "tappers" that you hold in your hands that vibrate back and forth, or even with tapping opposite sides of the body. Alternating Bilateral stimulation is very calming and grounding. 

Many people have experiences that are called "Little t trauma." Little t trauma most often occurs during childhood, when people are young and vulnerable. 

Little t traumas are not events that would be recognized as life-threatening, but still feel overwhelming to a child. An example of this are a perceived rejection from parents, peers, or teachers. 

The problem with Little t traumas is that when they happen, often the child makes up some negative meaning about themselves, such as "I'm not good enough," "There's something wrong with me," or "I don't matter." These negative beliefs are never said out loud, but they stick with the person into adulthood, and get triggered by things that happen during everyday life. With advanced training, therapists can learn to use EMDR Therapy effectively with Little t traumas, too. 

When people experience ongoing challenging situations in childhood, such as bullying, a parent with an anger problem or a substance abuse problem, a parent with personality disorder traits or PTSD, emotional neglect or any type of abuse, it creates problems that are called Complex or Developmental Trauma. 

The child makes adaptations in their personality to survive, such as becoming a people-pleaser, trying to fix others, learning to ignore their own feelings and needs, not speaking up, or various types of other persistent problems. 

These adaptations sometimes make kids or teenagers MORE vulnerable to single-incident trauma, which they don't have the inner resources to cope with, and they are more likely to develop PTSD. While most people with complex trauma include PTSD symptoms, complex PTSD is often considered to involve a more severe and pervasive set of symptoms compared to standard PTSD. These problems do not typically resolve with logic-based therapy or skills such as CBT and DBT. 

EMDR Therapy can be used to help these symptoms, when therapists have advanced training in using EMDR for Complex or Developmental Trauma. 

Phobias and OCD cause intense, irrational fear of specific objects, situations, and experiences. These can be deeply rooted in traumatic life events (Single incident or Complex/Developmental Trauma). Some examples are fear of flying, fear of throwing up, fear of germs, fear of bugs. 

With advanced training in EMDR, therapists can target the memories associated with these fears, reduce emotional distress and reprocess the memories that are creating these reactions. EMDR Therapy can be very effective to help relieve the distress of OCD and Phobias.