EMDR is an evidence-based trauma therapy used to alleviate anxiety disorders. This method uses various stimuli to engage both sides of your brain, such as eye movements, physical sensations or auditory tones.
EMDR therapy has been proven to successfully alleviate distressing emotional and physical symptoms associated with various mental health conditions, including PTSD. It works through an eight-phase treatment approach.
Bilateral Stimulation
EMDR Therapy is one of the most powerful tools available for treating addiction and trauma. This therapeutic technique helps clients process traumatizing events more easily while lessening their emotional impact and alleviating symptoms associated with distressing experiences. EMDR produces long-term benefits, helping individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms. While not a standalone therapy, EMDR may be combined with other evidence-based addiction treatments in order to address trauma through stimulating the brain’s natural healing processes and encouraging its resolution. Increase limbic processing while decreasing activation in the prefrontal cortex to facilitate recalling positive memories more readily. It also boosts production of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine that have been linked with improved moods and feelings of well-being.
As such, EMDR assists individuals in overcoming fears and learning healthy ways to cope with stress and anxiety without turning to drugs or alcohol for relief. Furthermore, EMDR decreases chronic pain by stimulating areas in the brain associated with relaxation and comfort. Furthermore, it’s helpful for identifying and challenging negative thoughts which contribute to emotional distress.
Though EMDR offers many therapeutic advantages, it is most often used for treating PTSD and related mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated its ability to regulate emotions more effectively while decreasing cravings. Furthermore, EMDR enhances self-worth and increases resilience against negative stimuli.
Bilateral stimulation is at the core of EMDR therapy, an approach used to address psychological ailments like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). EMDR utilizes various forms of bilateral stimulation – eye movements, tapping on various parts of the body or listening to alternate sounds can all engage both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously to facilitate emotional processing and integration.
Your therapist may ask you to focus on specific thoughts, emotions, and memories while engaging in EMDR. This process will lead to desensitization of these memories and emotions and could significantly aid recovery. Furthermore, research shows EMDR reduces physiological and emotional reactions associated with trauma-inducing memories – less likely triggering panic or anxiety attacks in response.
Visual Stimulation
EMDR has gained wide recognition as a means to treat trauma and disturbing memories, but its effectiveness also extends beyond trauma treatment to improve non-traumatic symptoms such as anxiety, depression and chronic back problems. Over 100,000 clinicians around the world are using this technique successfully since its creation in 1987 – millions of people have successfully used EMDR since its release into widespread use.
Your therapist will begin each session by asking you to identify a painful memory or stressor that’s creating difficulties, before initiating bilateral stimulations to help process them and understand your thoughts and emotions. They may use hand held vibrating pods, light bar stimulation, or simply asking you to follow their fingers from side to side (the original method developed by Francine Shapiro that gave rise to “eye movement desensitization and reprocessing” or EMDR).
A therapist will periodically stop eye movements, tapping, or other bilateral stimulation and ask you to pay attention to anything new that arises – be it images, memories, feelings or body sensations. Based on your response they will then determine next steps based on how you react. They may give you time to respond before asking any follow up questions; or if a negative emotional reaction arises they might suggest taking a short break until your feelings stabilize again.
Once both you and your therapist are comfortable with the desensitization phase of EMDR therapy, installation may follow. Here, you will revisit a traumatic memory while receiving bilateral stimulation; the goal being helping you accept and cope with it instead of running away from it or being overwhelmed by it.
Importantly, EMDR 8-phase therapy resembles traditional talk therapy in many respects; no hypnosis is used and you should always feel free to speak up if traumatic memories become too overwhelming during a session.
Auditory Stimulation
As with visual stimulation, auditory stimulation can trigger electrical signals in the brain known as auditory evoked potentials that can be measured as voltage changes within the head (Fig 17.1). These changes may help identify any auditory pathways within the brain which might need addressing during EMDR therapy sessions.
EMDR therapy aims to assist in processing negative emotions and beliefs by creating new connections in your brain that reduce distress caused by certain memories, as well as breaking any connections between traumatizing experiences and anxiety or depression symptoms.
An EMDR session involves your therapist using bilateral stimulation to assist in processing difficult memories and thoughts, such as eye movements, sounds or touch. You will track his fingers moving left-to-right in front of you or use a light bar resembling mini Christmas lights that move side to side; plastic pulsars which alternate mild vibrations may also aid interhemispheric integration according to research findings.
If you suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder, it is recommended to speak to your therapist before trying EMDR, as you could experience adverse reactions due to its bilateral stimulation properties. Since EMDR can address different aspects of your personality and may expose memories from another ego state, the initial consultation will help determine how appropriate EMDR would be in treating your case.
Sometimes during an EMDR session, new memories may surface that require treatment to ease. Your therapist can work with you to develop the most effective plan to address such cases.
Once an EMDR session has ended, you and your therapist will discuss any thoughts and emotions you’ve been having with each other. This typically lasts a couple minutes before moving onto the next part of your session. Your mind might continue processing traumatizing memories between treatments so it is essential that any issues that may arise between treatments be discussed with them as soon as they arise.
Physical Stimulation
EMDR therapy sessions often involve revisiting painful memories under the guidance of an EMDR therapist. At each step, bilateral stimulation may be employed to access and process these traumatic memories more easily, which may alleviate distress while improving your ability to handle future events.
Bilateral stimulation comes in many forms, ranging from the eye movements used in EMDR to auditory and tactile stimuli. Some therapists may employ wearable EMDR tappers that deliver vibrations directly to wrist or other body parts (for instance Butterfly Hug). These wearable devices offer clients who wish to remain mobile during EMDR sessions an option while providing online therapists with tools they need for sessions.
Physical stimulation can be extremely helpful in relieving musculoskeletal pain. Electronic muscle stimulation (EMS), one popular treatment option for backache, involves using small electrodes to send pulses of electricity directly into muscles that then contract, which reduces pain and inflammation. Finding an experienced physical therapist should help with this technique as it may be painful at times.
Neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES), another effective physical treatment for EMDR vibration therapy, targets nerves in the jaw. Dentists commonly employ this form of electric stimulation when treating conditions such as TMJ; its implementation requires placing electrodes across both jaws in a crosswise pattern to create a tingling sensation that creates relief from symptoms.
NMES can not only increase muscle function, but can also decrease muscular spasms and enhance blood flow to injured areas, aiding injury healing quicker while increasing range of motion and range of motion. Furthermore, NMES may even help relieve chronic low back pain.
EMDR can be an extremely powerful treatment option to address anxiety, depression and other mental health disorders. When seeking an EMDR therapist it is vital that they possess extensive experience working with trauma; furthermore it’s advisable to explore all options and pose plenty of questions when searching for one.
