What is emdr in psychology

Seek qualified and trusted psychologists for assistance in a range of areas. We are your partner in therapy, training and research based in Sydney. Username or Email Address. Remember Me. Enquire now to book a session or for further information.

Your enquiry will be treated with the strictest confidence. This website uses cookies to enhance your experience and to help us improve the site. Please see our Privacy Policy for further information. If you continue without changing your settings, we will assume that you are happy to receive these cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. What is EMDR? As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement REM sleep, internal associations arise and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings.

In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed.

EMDR therapy combines different elements to maximize treatment effects. A full description of the theory, sequence of treatment, and research on protocols and active mechanisms can be found in F. Shapiro Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: Basic principles, protocols and procedures 2nd edition New York: Guilford Press.

EMDR therapy involves attention to three time periods: the past, present, and future. Focus is given to past disturbing memories and related events. Also, it is given to current situations that cause distress, and to developing the skills and attitudes needed for positive future actions. With EMDR therapy, these items are addressed using an eight-phase treatment approach. Phase 1: The first phase is a history-taking session s. Client and therapist identify possible targets for EMDR processing.

These include distressing memories and current situations that cause emotional distress. Other targets may include related incidents in the past. Emphasis is placed on the development of specific skills and behaviors that will be needed by the client in future situations. Initial EMDR processing may be directed to childhood events rather than to adult onset stressors or the identified critical incident if the client had a problematic childhood.

Clients generally gain insight on their situations, the emotional distress resolves and they start to change their behaviors. The length of treatment depends upon the number of traumas and the age of PTSD onset. Generally, those with single event adult onset trauma can be successfully treated in under 5 hours. Multiple trauma victims may require a longer treatment time. Phase 2: During the second phase of treatment, the therapist ensures that the client has several different ways of handling emotional distress.

The therapist may teach the client a variety of imagery and stress reduction techniques the client can use during and between sessions. Your therapist will be on the lookout for patterns and themes in the difficulties and struggles you have faced, as these can sometimes have a history in unprocessed material in your past.

Phase 1. Your therapist will assess how easy or difficult it is for you to manage high levels of emotion, and make contact with your strengths and positive qualities. If these prove difficult for you, you will take some time to develop these skills by learning self soothing skills, and building your awareness of the positive attributes you possess that will help you to recover.

Phase 2. Once you and your therapist think that you are ready to address some of your challenging memories, you will examine your troubling memories in some detail. This will involve mapping them out to understand how the unprocessed memories have changed and distorted your sense of yourself in the present, and what you might prefer to think and feel about yourself.

You will work with your therapist to decide which memory or theme from your past would be most helpful to resolve first. Phase 3. When you have selected a priority for reprocessing, you will spend some sessions re-engaging with the troubling memory, and reprocessing it.

During reprocessing, your job is to observe what is happening in your mind and body, and keep yourself within the therapeutic window of arousal; you need to be sufficiently disturbed that the neural networks that store the memory are firing and therefore re-wiring, but not so disturbed that you re-traumatise yourself. The skills you will have learned and reinforced earlier in therapy, and the bilateral stimulation of your brain during the reprocessing will both assist you to stay in the therapeutic window.

Your therapist will check in regularly with you while you are doing this to make sure that you remain in the therapeutic window. For more detail, see here. Phase 4. Desensitising a memory is complete when you are no longer disturbed by it.