Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
EMDR is a trauma intervention that utilizes Bilateral Stimulation and Dual Awareness. Common portrayals of this intervention involve a light bar.
This approach is based on the AIP, Adaptive Information Processing Model, which suggests the brain is always trying to heal itself, but trauma is “frozen in time”.
When traumas occur, we experience emotions, physical responses, as well as cognitions about ourself or the world. These are what gets “frozen'“ in time, and is typically reactivating in similar situations in the present day.
By processing a memory while paying attention to a present stimulus, we are able to unfreeze the memories, and reprocess the negative core belief, as well as install a positive cognition.
I have personally been a client of EMDR, and use EMDR with clients for processing grief, breakups, single instance trauma, and childhood traumas.
Benefits and Risk
Like all modalities or interventions, there are both benefits and risks to EMDR. Potential benefits include decreased reactivation or associated symptoms (anxiety, hyperventilating, ruminating thoughts, etc). A benefit to EMDR in particular is that there is no need to share the details of processing with your therapist. EMDR has been proven to work well with Prolonged Grief Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Risks include that some client do not report improvements from EMDR. They may also report increased sensitivity or symptoms with EMDR. Since the brain is full of memory networks and some are repressed or in the unconscious, we can’t always anticipate what other memories may be “unlocked” with EMDR. It can be like opening Pandora’s Box.
To help mitigate these risks, we do not rush into EMDR, but spend lots of time in the preparation phase, to ensure understanding of one’s Window of Tolerance, coping skills, and support system. The integration of IFS also adds an intricate layer of understanding and resiliency in supplement to EMDR treatment.