EMDR For Traumatized Survivors - Recovery From Disturbing Thoughts

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EMDR: The Mystery Cure

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"You take them through snapshot by snapshot," says Bergmann. "You tell them you want them to begin with a ho-hum day and walk through it, processing all the disturbances, until they are out in the street after the event and it's over."

The patient then describes the day again, this time with their eyes closed. Finally, they are asked to repeat the events, but to focus on the more positive outcome -- say, that they survived, or saved a co-worker. After 90 minutes, the less traumatized clients will leave feeling relatively symptom-free; for more severe cases, it will take three or more sessions.

Three 90-minute sessions is a blip compared to the years of psychotherapy that traumatized survivors have typically undergone seeking recovery. Practitioners of EMDR say this is because their methodology turns the process on its head. "Traditional psychotherapy is to take something that hurts and think about it -- top down processing," says Bergmann. "EMDR is bottom up -- it's not important to talk about it, but to notice what you are feeling, what you feel in your body. What you think about it isn't important."

Francine Shapiro says she discovered EMDR entirely by accident in 1985, when she realized that certain kinds of eye movements alleviated her own disturbing thoughts. She began working with trauma victims -- including Vietnam vets and sexual abuse victims -- and in 1989 produced her first study. A subsequent study, by researchers in Honolulu, indicated that after 12 EMDR sessions, many Vietnam vets had no remaining post-traumatic stress symptoms. Ten years later, eight more studies by various researchers have shown that EMDR is effective with 80 to 100 percent of civilian trauma victims -- in just one to five sessions.

Because of the focus on eye motion, EMDR has the appearance of hypnotism, but it's not the same; the patient is fully awake and alert during the process. It's also a lot more complicated than simple eye motion -- instead, EMDR mixes certain principles of neuroscience with aspects of therapy, combining elements of all kinds of psychotherapy (psychodynamic, cognitive, experiental and behavioral) with visual and audio stimulation. The process, in the form created by Shapiro, stimulates the natural thinking and grieving processes that have become "stuck" in the victim of a traumatic event.

Researchers believe that an unhealed traumatic memory is primarily stored in the right side of the brain. Additionally, research shows that when recalling severe trauma, the left side of the brain -- which primarily controls verbal skills, logic, and optimism -- essentially shuts down. Therefore, the victim of trauma often is unable to process memories and get them out of their head -- instead, they relive moments over and over in their thoughts. EMDR triggers voluntary eye movements, which some researchers believe results in "accelerated information processing" by activating both brain hemispheres, says Bergmann. (There are a number of variations on EMDR therapy -- some EMDR clinicians use a point of light instead of their fingers, others ask their clients to listen to sounds through a headset, others tap on their client's palm. All are designed to stimulate both the left and right sides of the brain.)

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EMDR, though a logical process in many ways, remains somewhat mysterious, even to the therapist who invented it: "The 'why' of EMDR is not known, because there's not enough known in the area of brain physiology to know what the underpinnings of any form of psychotherapy are," says Shapiro. One popular theory is that EMDR forces the same kind of rapid eye movements (or REM) that occur when you sleep; and the function of REM is to process emotion. Others believe that the constant sensory stimulation basically bombards the brain, and activates the frontal areas that have shut down.

The fact is, however, that EMDR appears to work -- quickly, effectively and dramatically.

children seem to be the best candidates for EMDR

EMDR: The Mystery Cure

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