Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing (EMDR)

EMDR therapy is a phased, focused approach to treating trauma and other issues. It reconnects a client to images, thoughts, emotions, and body sensations associated with the trauma, allowing the natural healing powers of the brain to move towards an adaptive resolution. It is based on the idea that symptoms occur when trauma and other negative or challenging experiences overwhelm the brain’s natural ability to heal. EMDR facilitates this healing process using bilateral stimulation. 

BLS is used while the client is re-experiencing a past trauma. 

This is carried out in the safe environment of my counselling/therapy room (dual awareness).
 

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that empowers people to heal from the emotional distress and symptoms that have because of the result of disturbing life experiences.

It has been shown within repeated studies that clients who have used EMDR therapy can benefit from making a difference in their outcomes far quicker than that of having counselling alone. This is because it was originally assumed that severe emotional pain needs a long time to heal which is not the case with EMDR. EMDR therapy has been shown to heal the mind from psychological trauma in the same way as the body heals from physical trauma.

For example: When you cut your leg, your body works to heal and close the wound however if the foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it aggravates the wound area and causes pain. Once the foreign body is removed, healing resumes.

EMDR therapy has also been shown to demonstrate a similar sequence of events which occur with mental processes. The information processing system in the brain naturally moves towards mental health. When the system is imbalanced or blocked by the impact of the disturbing event, the emotional wound aggravates and starts to cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Therefore by using EMDR details procedures and protocols I can as your therapist can help facilitate your natural healing processes.

EMDR has been recognised as an effective treatment of trauma. It is now therefore being used as an effective treatment in treating the “everyday” memories that are the reason that clients come to see me that may have low self-esteem, feelings of powerlessness, and all varieties of other problems too.

EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation such as the Butterfly Hug) are used during one part of the session.

How Does an EMDR Session Work?

After we have together discussed which memory to target first, I will ask you to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind. I will either ask you to use your eyes to track my own fingers as I move them back and forth across your field of vision or I will ask you to cross your arms and place each hand onto the alternate lower shoulder areas and ask you to tap bilaterally side to side whilst listening to a pulse oximeter.

As this happens internal associations arise and you will begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings. If successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of your painful events is transformed on an emotional level.

For example: A rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief / decision that, “I survived it and I am strong.”

Unlike counselling / talk therapy on its own, the insight you gain in EMDR therapy results from your accelerated intellectual and emotional processes. EMDR can therefore make you feel empowered by the very experiences that once debased you. Your wounds have not just closed, they have transformed. As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, your thoughts, behaviours and feelings and are all robust indicators of emotional health and resolution – all without having to speak out the event in detail or doing any homework as you do with other therapies.