EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. EMDR is a relatively short-term, safe and effective therapy developed by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. that helps mind and body resolve the distressing psychological and physical problems that experiences of trauma leave behind. EMDR can put you in charge of your own healing by overcoming the feeling that your symptoms are beyond your control. EMDR involves an eight-step treatment process that integrates elements of other therapies that are well established. However, treating individuals who have been traumatized has been very challenging with many people with post-traumatic reactions struggling with their symptoms for years without being able to find effective symptom relief. EMDR brings new hope to traumatized individuals with a treatment approach that often progresses very rapidly and produces lasting benefits.

Our brains are designed to constantly process our experience and extract from our experiences any information that will help us be better prepared to deal with events in the future. In other words, we are programmed to learn from experience. Our brains are especially sensitive to any experience that is threatening, since the primary mission of our brain and nervous system is to keep us alive and safe. Following traumatic experiences, our nervous systems can get stuck into a “twilight” state where we can't put the trauma behind us; aspects of the threatening event keep getting reactivated by memories from the past or by situations that remind us of the traumatic situation, leaving the person feeling “frozen in time” and unable to resolve the trauma.

Post-traumatic reactions involve intrusive thoughts and alterations in our memory functions (e.g., not being able to remember certain things while other things can't seem to be forgotten), intense emotional swings, difficulties concentrating or focusing, generalized feelings of emotional distress and instability, vivid re-experiencing of events from the past, as well as a host of symptoms involving the physical body.

EMDR integrates parts of many well have proven psychotherapeutic approaches including psychodynamic, cognitive behavioral, experiential, physiological, and family systems therapies. Through a series of targeted questions combined with different types of alternating neurological stimulation (typically involving the eyes, the ears or touch), EMDR helps the mind and body re-integrate information in a different way and lay to rest repeated negative thoughts, images, feelings and physical sensations associated with the trauma. EMDR helps a person be able to remember what happened without having to re-experience the entire negative cascade of symptoms that defines unresolved post-traumatic reactions. EMDR helps the brain to store the new adaptive response patterns, allowing the person to finally have a sense of relief and to feel that the trauma is “done”. In effect, the traumatic experience is finally free to become a distant memory. People remain aware of what happened to them - EMDR doesn't produce amnesia - but they are also aware that what happened is over with and that they are free to move on with their lives. They are no longer "frozen in time" by the traumatic event that seems to keep repeating itself or intruding into the person's day-to-day life as a constant reminder of a painful past experience. EMDR can be a powerful steppingstone to being ready and able to tackle other aspects of your life that block you from reaching your full potential.

For more information on EMDR, please go to their web site www.emdr.com.

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