EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITISATION & REPROCESSING (EMDR)

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EMDR is a structured psychotherapy that aims to reduce the impact of past distressing experiences on current daily life. EMDR is highly evidence-based and recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a treatment of choice for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, it is effective and widely used for all manner of other difficulties like depression, anxiety, phobias, grief, and stress.

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According to EMDR theory, the cause of most forms of distress is unprocessed memories. When something threatening, distressing, or otherwise overwhelming happens to us, the part of our brain that can "digest" the experience in a useful way shuts down and the part that drives the fight, flight, and freeze response takes over. As a result, the memory of that event (the sights, sounds, feelings, bodily sensations, etc.) often gets stored in a raw and unintegrated way, and is easily triggered later in daily life. If you had a car accident years ago, for example, the sound of a car braking now might lead to panic or a flashback, as if the car accident were happening all over again.

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In EMDR therapy, we identify your current difficulties and key distressing memories that might be linked to them. We "process" these memories one-by-one by inviting you to bring to mind the memory while following a form of "bilateral stimulation", for example eye movements or gentle tapping. This is thought to encourage the brain's natural healing mechanism to become active, allowing it to make sense of the memory more adaptively through the perspective of your present, adult, growth-oriented self. Memories become much less emotionally intense, they are re-stored in an integrated way in your memory networks, and daily life becomes less activating.

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To learn more, visit the EMDR Association UK website or watch the useful videos below.

 

https://emdrassociation.org.uk/discover-emdr/the-basics