HOW EMDR CAN HELP WITH ANXIETY

In 1987 Francine Shapiro, a psychologist in California, was going for a walk outdoors when she noticed that her anxiety levels decreased after she focused on a branch swaying from left to right. She felt compelled to understand the brain better, specifically related to eye movement and bilateral stimulation to help anxiety dissipate. Thus Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy was created.

Within a few years, many therapists had begun to utilize EMDR to help their clients with their anxiety symptoms. Today, there are over 30,000 mental health practitioners trained in EMDR.  EMDR has not only been helpful in treating anxiety disorders, but also depression, eating disorders, and schizophrenia. EMDR offers hope to people who have been struggling with fears and uncomfortable symptoms where coping skills and talk therapy haven’t provided lasting relief. Because EMDR addresses the core of the symptom expression; the focus is in healing the root of the issue so your body can let go of the recurrent issues.

HOW DOES EMDR WORK FOR YOUR ANXIETY?

EMDR is a therapy technique that directs eye movements (or alternating tapping or auditory stimulation) while you are imagining a stress situation or negative belief. EMDR helps process through the intensity of the emotions and helps you shift your attention to more positive, adaptive beliefs, thereby naturally reducing your anxiety levels.

Here is a brief intro of what EMDR treatment would look like:

During this process, I want you to notice any body sensations, images, beliefs, and emotions that are coming up. We are inviting and allowing the mind and body to experience the emotions, images and insights. You will simply ride through whatever comes up. There is no wrong way of doing this. It take practice to get into the swing of things so be easy on yourself. Let’s go with what we can for today.

Before we begin, let me preface by saying that you may notice a newfound awareness, insight, or sudden shift. You may also be aware of a subtle shift such as a reduction in anxiety, body tension or overall sense of added ease and clear-headedness. EMDR’s mechanism activates what is called the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP), which means that regardless if you “feel” a shift, your brain is processing and moving the negative cognitions, thoughts and experiences to more adaptive, digestible (and often positive) ones. What you’ll notice is that we will be doing less talking, but rather, once the processing starts, I will check in with you between sets and encourage continued processing.

We do this to keep the part of the brain that is processing on track. Lengthy questions, analysis or shifting to talk therapy while processing will block the process. After EMDR processing is wrapped up, we then take time to integrate the work into your real-time life. However, this process is usually organic and flows naturally. And more often than not, the brain has already begun processing the information so less talk is needed, but rather, we slow the pace of the session to allow space for mindful digestion and for solidifying the work we are doing in real time.

Also, it is important to remember that people who struggle with complex trauma and dissociative tendencies or dissociative diagnosis will first engage in some prep work on working through the dissociations in order to do EMDR. Why? We want all the parts to be engaging in the EMDR process. When there is dissociation or fragmentation, your body won’t experience the necessary relief.

PROCESSING ANXIETY WITH EMDR HELPS THE CLIENT REGAIN CONTROL OVER THEIR EMOTIONAL STATE

How does this happen? EMDR helps rapidly reduce the intensity of negative emotions and disrupts the intensity associated with disturbing images, which may be stuck in your mind. Due to research in brain science and Somatic Psychotherapy, we know that stress isn’t always only carried in the brain, but also in the body with tension, discomfort, cramping, trembling, and body aches.

EMDR FOR SOMATIC SYMPTOM RELIEF

EMDR has also been proven to help provide relief from a variety of somatic symptoms that are often connected to anxiety disorders, such as stomach cramping, headaches, sweaty hands, heart palpitations, and shaky hands.

BENEFITS OF EMDR IN REGARD TO RE-TRAUAMTION

One of the benefits of EMDR is that it doesn’t require the patient to go into detail about traumatic experiences. Other types of therapies focus heavily on exposure and retelling the in-depth narrative. This therapy believes that exposing the person to the event or images will provide relief. However, recent research discovered that in some cases, this kind of intensive exposure can traumatize the client and make symptoms even worse.

EMDR is particularly inviting to clients who struggle with verbalizing their experiences because the events were either too painful or would be traumatizing to reimagine. According to neuroscience, it is not necessary to bring up detailed imaging or verbally express every part of a trauma. Rather, you can bring up an image, belief and body sensation that represents the worse part of the event and process that on an internal level.

A therapist that is skilled and compassionate in providing EDMR will guide the client to a place of inner safety and increased tranquility as the processing continues. EMDR clients have expressed that this method of treatment often helps them access parts of themselves that traditional talk therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy did not allow to access.

EMDR EFFICACY AND THE THEORIES BEHIND IT

Though there is a lot of evidence that EMDR does work, there is less obvious reasoning as to “how” it works. Dr. Joseph Goldberg shared that “by inducing the recall of distressing events (and thoughts) and divert attention from their emotional consequences, EMDR in some respects borrows basic principles used in exposure therapy…”

Francine Shapiro speculates that EMDR woks because it stimulates the effects of rapid eye movement (REM) that we experience in sleep. Shapiro says, “REM occurs in the same stage of sleep as dreaming, and during this time, scientists believe, the brain processes survival information. The implication is that, like REM sleep, the eye movements of EMDR facilitate the transfer of episodic memory, which includes emotion, physical sensations, and beliefs associated with the original event, into semantic memory networks, in which the meaning of the event has been extracted and negative associates are no longer present.”

You don’t have to have actually gone through a distressing event for EMDR processing to be effective. You can simply use a hypothetically stress-inducing situation or imagine future events that would bring anxiety forth, and the EMDR technique can be effective.

WANT TO RESOLVE BLOCKAGES TO YOUR HEALING? EMDR CAN HELP.

If you are on the journey for healing, but have been getting stuck, you can use EMDR to release the blockages so you can dive into a deeper level of healing. Now, you may not always start with EMDR right away and your therapist may not use it 100% of the session time, but effective psychotherapy often includes a combination of a few therapy types. This is especially important as each person responds differently to different therapeutic approaches.

Reach out now to begin your EMDR journey!