Have you ever wondered what EMDR is? Maybe you’ve heard of it or even tried it out yourself! Here, our resident Registered Clinical Counsellor Heather Doidge-Sidhu explains what it is and why she finds EMDR so useful in her clinical practice.
EMDR is the "gold standard" treatment modality for PTSD, and it is also extremely effective for mental health issues like anxiety, depression, phobias, pain, grief, and so many others. It stands for:
E - Eye
M - Movement
D - Desensitization (and)
R - Reprocessing
It's different from other types of therapy because its focus isn't on changing your thoughts, feelings, or behaviours that have resulted from a distressing event; it's about processing traumatic events in order to help your brain heal and communicate to its different parts in a more functional manner.
EMDR seeks to "file" all the pieces of a traumatic memory into its appropriate "folders". At its core, it's based on the belief that early traumatic events "prime" us to be more easily triggered to traumatic events as they happen throughout our lives.
Our brains are like computers. They like things to make sense, and things that are linked make sense. Thus, our brains link things that don't necessarily make logical sense to be linked.
As a really gentle example: have you ever smelled a certain smell and it triggered a memory completely unrelated to your present situation/environment? That's your brain making links. A lot of the time, this is totally harmless. But if there's a traumatic event, your brain starts making links that are repeatedly painful to experience. For example, a person shouting can put us into a state of fight or flight if we have experienced violence in our past.
So, what is processing?
Well, trauma stays in our mind "unprocessed", like a chunk. Rather than filing sound memories into the sound memory area, sight memories into the sight memory area, and so on and so forth, all the sensory, emotional, and physical aspects of a traumatic moment stay lumped together.
This likely had an evolutionary purpose in the past: if a sabre-toothed tiger chased you before and you got away, and you see another angry-looking sabre-toothed tiger, your "trauma chunk" will trigger you to run again. This saved lives! Unfortunately, this tendency to keep trauma this way in our minds is not as functional nowadays when most of our days are spent (hopefully) in non-life-threatening scenarios.
So, going back to the person with violence in their past: after EMDR, they will still remember the violence; EMDR does not take away experiences in our pasts. However, it will no longer feel distressing; it will simply be something unfortunate that happened.
EMDR takes the power away from traumatic events.
What should I expect when being treated using EMDR?
EMDR is an 8-step protocol, guided by your counsellor. It's typically faster than other types of counselling, but that is of course dependent on how much material needs to be processed. The start of EMDR Therapy resembles many other therapeutic modalities; it involves relationship building between the client and the therapist, history taking, and preparation for the processing. There is some assessment of present distress level, and some conversation about the client's goals regarding self-concept. Establishment of some baseline safety measures is key at this point as well, so the client has the tools to ground themselves if they're feeling triggered, and also "put away" difficult feelings if they arise either at inopportune times, or if they're feeling overwhelming.
The desensitization part of EMDR is the part people have likely heard about or seen videos of. It involves bilateral stimulation of some sort, usually eye movements, but also sometimes tapping, or sound-based, while focusing on parts of the traumatic event one at a time, until the client feels the entire thing is completely resolved.
EMDR is not finished at that point, though! The counsellor will then work with the client to solidify a more positive self-concept, in place of the negative one that existed previously. There are always some checks for residual tension indicating incomplete processing, and then there's closure and re-evaluation. Every session with an EMDR therapist should end with the client feeling better than how they felt at the start.
EMDR can be the only type of therapy you do with a counsellor, or it can be a piece of your therapeutic journey. It's up to you!
To learn more about EMDR, head to emdria.org.
