About EMDR

EMDR F.A.Q.’s

1. How did EMDR originate?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) originated in 1987 when psychologist Francine Shapiro made the discovery that linked voluntary bilateral eye movements to the ability to process negative memories. Dr. Shapiro put this finding into practice through a research study that involved treating traumatized Vietnam combat veterans, as well as, victims of sexual assault with eye movement therapy (now EMDR). In this study, participants were instructed to pay attention to an emotionally-disturbing stimulus while also focusing on the therapist’s directions for bilateral eye movements (Shapiro, 1987). This study confirmed that EMDR helped in the reprocessing of traumatic memories and significantly reduced the participants’ trauma symptoms.

2. What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a type of treatment that combines psychodynamic, cognitive, behavioral, and client-centered  therapies for the treatment of experientially-based disorders (Shapiro, 2001). It uses what we know about information processing to help the client resolve the memories of past negative experiences. These negative experiences include trauma from combat, assault, negative childhood or adult events, and even natural disasters.

In an information-processing model, experientally-based disorders are thought to have surfaced from a maladaptive storage of perceptual information. In other words, it is thought that traumatic memories were not processed normally into one’s memory, leading to the feeling of recurrence through flashbacks, as if the events were still in the present. In order to correctly store these memories where the brain stores the past, EMDR treatment focuses on the perceptions of this memory with all its somatic charged components (which are called to mind), and when they are in full attention, therapist-guided eye bilateral movements are completed to desensitize the client to this memory.

There are eight phases to this treatment, all with three goals in mind: 1. to facilitate the resolution of these traumatic memories occurred during childhood , or as an adult, 2. to lower and eventually completely dissolve the connection between the memory itself and external stimuli that may trigger distress, and 3. to incorporate adaptive skills, attitudes, and behaviors to improve the clients’ functioning in the present and future.

3. What seems to make clients respond well?

According to Shapiro, symptom relief occurs when the client is able to associate the traumatic memory with more adaptive memories and information. EMDR stimulates these memory network formations through a client-centered approach. EMDR treatment is hypothesized to allow the clinician to act as a facilitator in the client’s natural healing process. When the client is able to reprocess the distressing memory of the experience, the trauma symptoms usually subside.

For more information on EMDR visit: www.emdria.org