EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a therapy that helps a client to desensitize stressful and traumatic memories, and reorganize the way associated thoughts are stored in memory. For many, EMDR therapy provides significant relief of anxiety, depression and habitual responses to stress. EMDR was developed in 1987 by a psychologist, Dr Francine Shapiro, for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Therapists use hand (or flashing light) movements to stimulate side-to-side eye movements. The process sometimes uses other alternating stimuli, such as tapping side-to-side, or tones that alternate from ear to ear. While this is going on, the patient talks about stressful thoughts or traumatic events, and somehow, in the process, they see things in a new light. Some say the results were prompt, and worth months of talk therapy.

EMDR is founded on the premise that each person has both an innate tendency to move toward health and wholeness, and the inner capacity to achieve it. EMDR integrates elements from both psychological theories (e.g. affect, attachment, behavior, bioinformational processing, cognitive, humanistic, family systems, psychodynamic and somatic) and psychotherapies (e.g., body-based, cognitive-behavioral, interpersonal, person-centered, and psychodynamic) into a standardized set of procedures and clinical protocols.

The EMDR therapy model includes the following principles:

1. Each person has a physiological information processing system through which new experiences are processed, stored or released.
2. Information related to life experiences is stored in memory networks that contain related thoughts, images, audio or olfactory memories, emotions, and bodily sensations.
3. Memory networks are organized around the earliest related event.
4. Normal information processing, including activities such as talking with supportive friends, dreaming, problem solving, and healthy communication, lead to adaptive learning and ultimately release from many of the negative effects and consequences of unresolved stress,.
5. Traumatic experiences and persistent unmet interpersonal needs during crucial periods in development are sometimes incompletely processed and become stored in dysfunctional ways.
6. Dysfunctional reactions to stress may arise when memory networks, related to a distressing or traumatic experience, are not fully processed. As a result, troublesome psychiatric symptoms may develop and persist.
7. During an EMDR session, information processing of memory networks is facilitated by specific types of bilateral sensory stimulation, including left-right, visual, audio and tactile stimulation, combined with the other specific procedural steps used in EMDR. These protocols create states of balanced or dual attention to facilitate information processing. In this state the client experiences simultaneously the distressing memory and the present context as observer.
8. The combination of EMDR procedures and bilateral stimulation help make disturbing memory images appear less vivid, and associated feelings become less disturbing.
9. During EMDR therapy, links to positive, helpful information also emerge. EMDR information processing helps to forge new and resourceful associations within and between memory networks.
10. As a result, the client is able to free themselves from many effects of "triggers" that once produced emotional symptoms. The client becomes more resourceful and adaptive in dealing with current life situations.

For more information about EMDR visit http://www.EMDR.com.

EMDR therapy is available at the Medical Center. Call 480-970-0000.

Patients requesting this therapy will be directed to professionals with specific training in these protocols.