You’re optimistic when you first hear about eye movement densensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) — a unique type of talk therapy that has great success in turning down the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Now that your appointment is almost here, your optimism is tinged with anxiety, too. What should you expect?
Unlike other psychotherapy treatments, EMDR uses a variety of bilateral physical movements and stimulation – in addition to talking and counseling, to resolve your trauma. Although you don’t need to do anything to prepare, it’s helpful to understand the process beforehand.
At The Soho Center for Mental Health Counseling, our expert counselors may recommend EMDR to resolve current and past traumas. Although PTSD is strongly associated in the common imagination with veterans, anyone can suffer from PTSD, due to traumatic experiences such as:
However, you don’t need to have PTSD to benefit from EMDR. You can also suffer from anxiety, panic attacks, or various addictions.
What can you expect during your first EMDR session? The following is a brief guide.
The first phase of EMDR is to decide with your therapist if you’re ready to face your traumatic memories in therapy. It’s important to know that you don’t necessarily have to voice those memories out loud. Simply focusing on them mentally during EMDR can help you reprocess them.
You identify a “target” for your EMDR. If you’ve been through a number of upsetting, traumatizing experiences, you may decide to pick the one that upsets you most. You also talk about the kinds of behaviors and reactions you’d like to develop to handle future situations that might be triggering or traumatizing.
What makes EMDR unique and distinct from other forms of psychotherapy is that you use your own body’s movements to help you reprocess your traumatic memories so that they don’t trigger you anymore. Bilateral movements — movements that encompass both sides of your body — are essential to EMDR, such as:
Once you’re comfortable with the physical techniques, you practice them while simultaneously focusing on your traumatic memory. You and your therapist continue the 30-second sessions until your distress diminishes.
Pay attention to anything that comes up for you during the 30 seconds or so that the bilateral movements last, including emotions and physical sensations. After you and your therapist discuss your reactions to the bilateral stimulation, you then decide on a positive belief or feeling that could replace the traumatic one.
You then repeat the EMDR movements while focusing on the memory as well as the new belief or feeling. As each traumatic trigger diminishes, you focus on a new one until you’ve addressed them all.
Learning anything new can be uncomfortable and so can focusing on your trauma in the presence of a counselor. However, these feelings usually fade quickly. Women and men who continue with EMDR feel better and better as they become more comfortable with the process.
Up to 90% of women and men who had a single trauma they want to resolve no longer have PTSD after just three 90-minute sessions of EMDR. In one study, all of those who’d suffered single traumas and 77% of those who suffered multiple traumas no longer had PTSD after six 50-minute EMDR sessions.
Unlike some forms of talk therapy, EMDR doesn’t last for years or even, usually, for more than a few months. It’s designed to take place over eight phases. Most women and men feel that their trauma’s resolved within 12 sessions.
Although nothing can undo the trauma you experienced, after EMDR you don’t continue to re-experience or relive the trauma. You know it exists, you remember it, but it doesn’t haunt you or affect your life the way it once did.
You can break the grip of a traumatic experience with EMDR. Call or use our online form to contact our helpful office staff for an in-person appointment at our Greenwich Village offices in New York City, New York, or set up EMDR via secure teletherapy today.
