EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and ReprocessingI have been using EMDR with clients since the late 1990's and find it an important and effective tool in an overall counseling approach. It's useful for anxiety, trauma, phobias, and other experiences that have become "stuck" in one's mind and body. I learned of its effectiveness first hand during my Level 1 training when I worked on my own fear of flying with one of the other students/ therapists during a practice session. Within an hour I was cured, and have enjoyed flying ever since! EMDR unfreezes our stuck memories and conditioning from the past and releases us to move forward.Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a comprehensive, integrative psychotherapy approach. It contains elements of many effective psychotherapies in structured protocols that are designed to maximize treatment effects. EMDR™ psychotherapy is an information processing therapy. It views a variety of conditions as resulting from "stuck" experiences of upset, trauma, anxiety and the like which have frozen one's experience in a way that prevents them from moving past it. My first airplane flight in 1972 - a terribly turbulent transatlantic flight with storms the entire way - powerfully impressed my nervous system with an experience I didn't get over. Trying to think rationally about it didn't help. Time didn't help. EMDR helped to unfreeze the fixed reaction and upsetting associations with flying, allowed me to "process" them out, and left me free of the troubling thoughts, images, and emotions. While a simple phobia oversimplifies what EMDR is about, you can see how traumatic experiences, significant childhood events, heartbreaks, even the relatively "normal" frustrations of early life and later, could become "stuck" in one's mind and body in ways that leaves a person feeling anxious, depressed, bad about themselves, etc. EMDR treatment helps unravel those networks of experiences and associations. Treatment attends to the past experiences that have set the groundwork for distress, the current situations that trigger emotions, associated beliefs and body sensations, and the positive experience needed to enhance future behaviors and mental health. During treatment various procedures and protocols are used. One of the most common elements is "dual stimulation", most often using side-to-side eye movements. The client is asked to attend momentarily to past memories, present triggers, or anticipated future experiences while at the same time following the therapist's fingers moving rapidly in front of them. During that time, clients generally experience insight, changes in memories, or new associations. The therapist assists the client to focus on appropriate material before initiation of each following set of eye movements. Client and therapist identify possible targets for EMDR processing. These include recent distressing events, current situations that produce emotional disturbance, related past events, and the development of specific skills and behaviors that will be needed by the client in future situations. The therapist asks the client to keep a journal during the week to document any related material that may arise to discuss at the next session. Important strengths or skills the client needs to address future triggering situations are identified and "installed", also using lateral eye movements. After EMDR processing, clients generally report that the emotional distress related to the memory has been eliminated, or greatly decreased, and that they have gained important cognitive insights. Importantly, these emotional and cognitive changes usually result in spontaneous behavioral and personal change, which are further enhanced with standard EMDR procedures. Call Dr. DiDomenicis at 510-915-2647 or Email Fran@drfrand.com
|