WELCOME back to our exploration into all things emotional. In this edition our Emotional Health columnist LEIGH SMITH, shares her insights into the profound benefits of EMDR, and how it has changed her approach to therapy.
So, who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?
I have been in the counselling profession for nearly two decades, and trained in many approaches, I have seen trends in therapy come and go, and have tried and tested each ‘new kid on the block’, so when the hype about EMDR became deafening I thought I had better check it out. I must say that I felt more than a little sceptical as I read through some of the testimonials which reported fast acting relief from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in a ridiculously short amount of time. I couldn’t help thinking that anything that is a quick fix won’t last, that’s not how counselling works, it takes time, commitment, and sometimes painful processing to reduce the effects of trauma, but was I wrong?
So, I looked more closely to find out what the EMDR fuss was all about?
I decided that I needed to enrol on some training to find out more, and experience it for myself. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, and was developed by Francine Shapiro in 1987. It is a well researched, and very structured Psychotherapy, which involves working with memories, body sensations, core-self beliefs, and emotions to eliminate the emotional, physiological, and cognitive remnants of painful past experiences. It targets trauma, both the life threatening big ‘T’ traumas and little ‘t’ traumas too. It’s recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a treatment for PTSD. EMDR is strongly structured and scripted, and the client is taken through eight phases of protocol, which include taking a client history, preparation, resourcing, processing, and installing the positive effects of the therapy. My first impressions were that it has a rather clinical feel to it, and less exploration and discussion to my normal way of working. I didn’t initially warm to this, so it wasn’t a surprise that my EMDR teacher had to encourage me in the training to “get out of the way” and stick to the protocols, letting the process work on its own, without my desire to tweak it or make it more ‘Leigh like’. After being persuaded to put my ego in a box, I was quite happy to accept that EMDR was indeed a valuable tool and one which has a place in the world of trauma therapy, but maybe not for me, until I experienced it directly for myself in a training practice session which blew my mind. We were encouraged to work on real issues in our training, but to find ones which felt safe, and so I chose an old and well processed memory from my childhood, I felt comfortable in the knowledge that I had thoroughly worked through this issue so many times that it held nothing new for me, but I was so very wrong. The simple technique involves a process known as desensitization, you start with a memory of a traumatic or painful event, and find the negative belief which you have formed about this event, then you follow the therapists hand movements from side to side back and forth with your eyes, and pause occasionally to ‘report’ what you are experiencing. I was amazed as I reported back to my therapist what I was experiencing, and then powerful and transformative processing just took over, and my mind started to fill in the gaps and provided me with the insights into this event that I had never experienced before. I was a bundle of snot and tears as I whole heartedly accepted the healing which was 45 years overdue, and dissolved a negative belief which had haunted me for most of my life. Before we began the processing, we had scored the intensity of this painful memory, and once processed we scored it again, and I can honestly say the pain was gone, completely, and it has not returned. I was baffled by the simplicity of the process and how it took me into a place in my mind that activated all that I needed to completely reprocess this event. So, how does it work? Well, this is one reason why EMDR is still controversial, because there is no exact and scientific explanation as to how it works. EMDR therapy is based on the adaptive information processing (AIP) model, which tells us that, our minds are just like our bodies, and when they are damaged they have a natural capacity to heal. Sometimes if an event is extremely stressful or traumatic it can overwhelm the brain and create an obstacle to healing, just like a splinter left in a wound. This can stop the event from being fully processed and adapted into a past event – a story – just something that happened, and lead to original and traumatic perceptions being stored without any adaptions or modifications – unprocessed. EMDR processes the stuck event, removing the powerful emotions associated with the memory and naturally processing the memory into an adapted resolution. So here I am now, using EMDR on the majority of my clients, as trauma seems to be present in so much of the issues that people present to me. I am wholeheartedly embracing this approach and I am seeing fantastic results in most of my clients, who like me, are often blown away by the immediacy and power of the transformation. One client told me after her therapy had ended: “The only negative thing I am left with, is the years of pain and anguish that I’ve suffered, it could have been removed so simply, I didn’t have to suffer for so long, that’s a hard one to deal with.” If you’re looking for an EMDR therapist, I recommend checking the EMDR Europe website to ensure the therapist is certified (ideally), or minimally, was trained by an approved EMDR training provider. To find a therapist near you, you can also visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory