EMDR: what is it all about?

I am often asked to explain how a therapy like Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (otherwise known as EMDR) works. "Is it hypnosis?" is a very understandable question given the apparently magical finger waggling. Underlying this question is a very real concern from clients that what will happen to them is not under their own control.

In reality everything that happens in a client's mind when they are being treated using EMDR is under the control of their own minds. As I routinely tell my clients, I am simply your guide and your support, it is your mind that is doing the work and your mind that is in control.

So what does that mean in practice? EMDR is not actually a talking therapy. "What?!" I hear you say. You see, not all psychological therapies involve talking. Let me explain why. The relatively commonly experienced mental health difficulty of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) develops when systems in our brain designed to detect and support us to stay safe in the face of danger start misfiring in response to cues that were present at the time something frightening happened to us. Traditional forms of talking therapy would have us talk through the frightening experience in order to start to feel safe again. In EMDR your therapist will support you to access memories of the experience in a way that feels safe and containing for you. They will then guide your brain to reprocess the memories so that they are no longer distressing, and so that your brain learns that you are safe. All without talking in any depth about the experience at all. It's a bit like what happens during dream sleep, where your brain processes memories of events that have happened during the day in order to make sense of them, learn from them, and file them away so that they can be accessed later as required.

So there you have it, EMDR is an information processing therapy that can help people overcome psychological or emotionally based difficulties that have their routes in past traumatic or difficult life events. Without the need for significant talk or discussion about what happened. I hope that helps :-)