EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) may have a rather offputting name.
Indeed, the American psychotherapist Francine Shapiro who first conceived this system in the late 1980s now rather regrets restricting the definition to eye movement.
But built on a clear and grounded understanding of how the brain and the body experience and process trauma and distress, EMDR is now undoubtedly one of the most successful, effective and intensively-researched ways we know of tackling the aftermath of trauma.
As a registered practitioner, accredited with EMDR Europe and now working towards Consultant status, I’ve been using this approach with clients for more than five years, and am regularly inspired by the positive changes they can find themselves experiencing.
So how does EMDR actually work?
Simply put, EMDR uses what we call bilateral stimulation of the senses (replicating eye movements similar to what you do in REM sleep when you dream, or using gentle buzzers held in each hand, or headphones, or taps on the back of your hands) to get the brain’s thinking left hemisphere to talk intensely to its feeling right half. (OK, this is a sweeping generalisation of brain science, but I hope it gives you an idea).
The effect is to create healing connections at the deepest emotional, physical and intellectual levels, kick-starting the psychological processors that make sense of, and often quite quickly lay to rest, old distress which continues to impact on the present.
With single-event traumas such as a car accident or a mugging, much good work can often be done in just three or four meetings. Sometimes, if the trauma sits deeper – perhaps tangled up with childhood experiences of abuse or neglect – it can take longer, and need to be embedded within a wider, slower and more exploratory approach.
Although nothing can ever be entirely guaranteed to work, of course, my experience of using EMDR is that it can bring about deep, powerful and rapid change, reaching parts, as it were, which other forms of therapy, however well-grounded and valuable in their own right, sometimes just don’t shift. Sessions are usually 55 minutes (occasionally, with your agreement, we might work for double sessions of two hours), and carefully paced at a depth and speed which is right for you.
Do get in touch if you’d like to know more. If you’re looking for an accredited and experienced EMDR therapist in the wider Europe, a good place to start the search is the website of the European EMDR Association.