Here are the answers to your EMDR questions. Hint: It’s not only for trauma.
Updated April 16, 2024 Reviewed by Devon Frye
“The speed at which change occurs during EMDR contradicts the traditional notion of time as essential for psychological healing.”-Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, Boston University School of Medicine
Providing EMDR therapy is my ultimate passion. The often quick relief EMDR can provide clients has become my life’s purpose. People often ask me how I got into EMDR. I’ve had my share of very difficult experiences in life. I grew up with a speech impediment and was bullied constantly in school as a child. In high school, I was also chronically teased because of acne, frequently called pizza-face. In around 2013, I noticed that this bullying affected my self-esteem, my sleep, appetite, well-being, and got in the way of my relationships. I finally went to an EMDR therapist.
Long story short, my experience receiving EMDR completely changed my life. Those past experiences don’t bother me at all anymore (I guess this is why I can write about them publicly). In fact, I know how much wiser and stronger I’ve grown from these past struggles. It was intensely cathartic, emotionally draining, challenging, yet relieving and empowering. After therapy, I knew I had to learn EMDR myself so I could help others effectively and efficiently.
The below represents the culmination of seven years of studying, writing about, and practicing EMDR. I am now fully certified in EMDR and train EMDR therapists as an EMDR Consultant. In the next years, my main purpose will be writing about, conducting, and teaching EMDR therapy.
What is EMDR Therapy?
EMDR is not a traditional talk-therapy like most other psychotherapies; it’s more of a mindfulness-based therapy, but there’s more. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. You may have heard of EMDR through other therapists, friends, doctors, or even seen it featured in movies or television shows. It is an empirically supported (well-researched), and structured model of psychotherapeutic treatment that involves working with memories, body sensations, core-self beliefs, and emotions to eliminate the residential emotional, somatic, and cognitive remnants of painful past experiences.
Whereas a dentist would fill a cavity, or a surgeon would heal your injured wrist, EMDR is a form of emotional surgery to heal emotional wounds to help you “get past your past.” Stay tuned below for the “pro-tips for clients” section if you want EMDR therapy for yourself.
How Does EMDR Work?
EMDR therapy is based on the adaptive information processing (AIP) model, which points to the strength-based notion that our minds have a natural capacity to process what happens to us in a healthy and adaptive way. However, significantly stressful experiences can overwhelm the brain’s natural processing and healing capacity. When the information related to a particularly stressful occurrence is ineffectually processed, the initial perceptions can be stored essentially as they were originally encoded, along with any distorted thoughts, images, sensations, or perceptions experienced when it happened (Shapiro, 2007). Thus, in EMDR, the culprit fueling mental health issues is unprocessed, inadequately digested memories stored in the brain and body. EMDR works by stimulating the brain in ways that lead it to process unprocessed or unhealed memories, leading to a natural restoration and adaptive resolution, decreased emotional charge (desensitization, or the “D” of EMDR), and linkage to positive memory networks (reprocessing, or the “R” of EMDR). EMDR helps people address and work through those memories, sensations, and emotions and resume normal, adaptive, and healthy processing. An experience that may have triggered a negative response may no longer affect them the way it used to after EMDR treatment. Difficult experiences will likely become less upsetting.