What is EMDR and How Does it Work? – The Basics

Many people wonder what is EMDR and how does it work? Also known as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, EMDR is a psychotherapy technique that was created to heal emotional pain brought about by traumatic mental recollections. When properly used, it can expedite the reaching and processing of painful memories, as well as other hidden life experiences that could be bringing discomfort to the individual.

What is EMDR and How Does it Work?

According to research, EMDR treatment has the potential to speed-up treatment, where other traditional psychotherapy methods may take years to achieve any meaningful difference in the patient’s life. While it’s commonly assumed that emotional scars take much longer to relieve, this technique has overturned the myth and promises to fast-track the process just like the body heals from physical wounds. For instance, when you accidentally cut your finger the body almost immediately starts to repair the damage, same as what EMDR does to the mind.

How it’s performed:

During treatment, the patient would be made to interact with their disturbing thoughts in short and continuous sessions, while at the same time concentrating on an external source of stimuli. The therapist skillfully directs the person’s lateral eye motion to achieve the necessary levels of distraction, however other methods of focusing concentration such as audio stimulation and hand-tapping can also be applied.

Basically, EMDR seeks to make new and positive cognitive associations with various environmental triggers, so that fresh learning can occur and previously distressing memories can be replaced with brighter mental insights. Over time, this would create a new way of processing information so that the individual won’t be negatively affected were the same experience to be replicated.

In overall, EMDR treatment uses 3 unique steps to bring about healing and these are:

• Identifying past circumstances that are responsible for bringing about emotional pain in the patient’s life.
• Tackling current events that bring out distress when elicited, these internal & external triggers need to be processed and desensitized.
• The patient is provided with mental templates denoting future events, this helps them to gain new skills that are useful in adaptive daily living.

EMDR therapy works since the brain is naturally designed to foster mental aptitude, therefore, if there’s anything causing an imbalance in the mind it will seek to address this issue with proper treatment so that the person can go back to a healthy mindset without experiencing any emotional distress.

In terms of success rate, research shows that 84 to 90pct of single-trauma patients experience full healing from post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD) after just three 1hr 30min treatment sessions. Another test found that 77pct of victims who experienced multiple traumas were no longer exhibiting PTSD symptoms after a total of six 50-minute sessions.

This therapy is very effective in providing healing for conditions such as poor self-esteem, feelings of helplessness and sadness among others. It addresses constant recurring memories that are the root cause of these emotional problems, by bringing them out to the open and changing the person’s way of thinking.

Currently, it’s estimated that more than 100,000 clinicians around the globe use EMDR for therapy, and it has already helped millions of people experience faster healing.

To summarize on what is EMDR and how does it work, it is a psychotherapy used to treat individuals who have experienced trauma in their life. It only takes a few sessions to heal and the results are usually long-lasting.