EMDR Therapy : Does It Work?EMDR Therapy or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is used to desensitize the charge of a trauma or disturbing memory by facilitating the processing of dissociated bits of information. From that perspective, EMDR can be applied to many mental and behavioral health issues not limited to dissociative disorders, personality disorders, complicated grief, body dysmorphic disorder, conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder. Although some marriage counselors and psychotherapists may use EMDR to treat stressors ranging from co-parenting to writers block, to anger management, medical journals mostly point to EMDR therapy for disorders stemming from traumatic life experiences such as rape, natural disasters, car accidents, to symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome or disorder and anxiety not limited to nightmares Theoretically...To understand better how EMDR works, lets start by thinking of post traumatic stress in terms of a person’s inability to process episodic memory. Episodic memory is basically the memory of events, times, places, emotions and knowledge of a difficult or traumatic experience.A study in the journal Neuropsychology (17 (2): 221-9) tested the effects of eye movement therapy on episodic memory and found that bilateral eye movements such as those in EMDR produced better recall compared to no eye movement or a vertical eye movement process. It is thought that the transfer of information across the brain’s hemispheres improves the processing of episodic memories because it is a bilateral process which harnesses both sides of the brain. EMDR and REMAnother way of looking at EMDR is from the perspective that it is a neurobiological process similar to that which happens during rem sleep (rapid eye movement). The idea that EMDR functions like the neurobiological process of rem sleep is supported in a study by D. Kuiken and colleagues in the journal Imagination, Cognition & Personality,( 2001. 21(1): p. 3-20) that found that, eye movement increased flexibility of attention and increased readiness to process metaphorical material.Rapid eye movements during sleep appear to allow traumatic memories to form links with other non-traumatic memories that can then be integrated into a healing story, or narrative if you will, language created in the dreams and ruminations of deep sleep. Sometimes, an event can be so distressing it prevents information from being transferred from an episodic memory to a semantic memory (which basically means a person is not able to think about the meaning of the memory). Because of high levels of arousal during a traumatic incident, associations between the trauma and other related experiences don‘t develop and the person is stuck trying to process fragmented bits of data. Like rapid eye movement in sleep, EMDR allows us to bridge the actual traumatic episode to a meaningful story giving our ego a sense of mastery over the event. Power TherapyEMDR is considered one of the power therapies, a class of therapy thought to be more effective and efficient than traditional methods of psychotherapy.There is no definitive explanation of why Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing works like other power therapies, “better, faster and stronger” than traditional approaches. Many a skeptical inquirer will dismiss EMDR as “pseudo-science” wagging their finger at marriage counselors, psychotherapists and other practitioners who don’t take the time and energy to document outcome studies. Personally, because there is plenty of research and evidence to establish the efficacy of EMDR, I keep the focus on whether or not my client has finished therapy satisfied. The bottom line regarding skepticism as I see it is, if you have a difficult problem you need resolved and you haven’t reached your turning point yet, would you be willing to give something else a try that is safe and non-invasive to find out if it works? How will you really know until you try it? But I will digress no further with motivational interviewing for skeptics. As it stands, for PTSD treatment, EMDR therapy is documented in medical journals as equally effective as exposure therapy and SSRI’s . Additionally, studies suggest the first-line of therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder should be cognitive behavioral therapy or EMDR. See these studies if you’d like access to more research supporting the use of EMDR therapy. The British Journal of Psychiatry : the journal of mental science 190: 97-104. Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 5, 126±144 (1998) Resources
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