EMDR
What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing?
EMDR is a treatment model that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences (trauma). Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.
What is Adaptive Information Processing?
The model on which EMDR is based, Adaptive Information Processing (AIP), posits that much of disconnection is due to the incomplete processing of maladaptive memories (stuck memories). Treatment focuses on transforming maladaptive memories to adaptive memories.
Memories of earlier traumatic and adverse life experiences which are maladaptively stored or disconnected increase vulnerability to anxiety, depression, PTSD, addiction, low self-esteem and physical symptoms of stress and may interfere with access to the individual's sense of self-worth, safety, ability to assume appropriate responsibility for self or other, or limits one's sense of connection.
From this perspective, memories of small ‘t-Trauma’ events (that include experiences of shame, guilt, disappointment, neglect, abandonment, invalidation, or dysfunctional family dynamics) become mal-adaptively encoded just as ‘T-Trauma’
*All trauma is disconnection from essence/source/soul, regardless of how it is identified.*
How is EMDR different from other therapies?
EMDR differs from traditional therapies because it brings together aspects of many major psychological orientations: the attention to etiological events underscored by psychodynamic therapy, the conditioned responses highlighted by behavior therapy, the beliefs of cognitive therapy, the emotions of experiential therapies, the body sensations of somatic therapies, and the contextual understanding of system’s theory. (Shapiro)