A R T I C L E S
EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING
Accelerating the natural information processing system of the mind and body.
By Joel Turgesen
EMDR provides a structure, which enhances the natural information process system and accelerates it. It also provides a way in which the therapist can more clearly detach and allow the process to unfold. The therapeutic environment becomes safer and transference/counter-transference issues are minimized.
HOW IT WORKS
It is not what has been done to us that matters, as much as what we do with what has been done to us. Sartre
In many ways, EMDR is not so much a new therapeutic approach as one that neatly incorporates and aligns many therapeutic models. As far back as I can remember, in Counseling 101, the key to doing psychotherapy, was to create a safe environment, an unconditionally positive one, in which the client would be allowed to stay with their feelings: “Stay with it” is the essence of it all, isn't it. Adding eye movement to the methodology increases ones ability to stay with the process and trust it. It reduces the fear of staying with the feeling, which then allows the emotional energy to be released.
When we hold our minds on a memory of a traumatic event, brain function appears to narrow, as can be observed now with PET scans, to portions of the right cortical hemisphere and amygdala. The memory will consist of visual aspects (the “movie clip”), other sensory aspects and thoughts, the emotions which are felt as sensations in the body and the negative cognition, the erroneous definition that was learned about the self from the incident.
Depending on the emotion being experienced, the specific part of the brain governing that emotion will become more dominant, even hyperactive, with the rest of the brain “cooling” down. And we lose access to much of the brain that is normally available to us. It could be likened to trying to go down the freeway in first gear totally forgetting that we have several more gears we could use.
Eye movement produces bilateral stimulation to the brain, which creates additional neural activity and allows us to “shift gears”, thus accessing more of the brain to come to bear on the remembered event. The result is that we experience a shift in perception that allows for increased processing of the stored information, like a logjam getting jostled just enough for the flow of the river to flush the blockage on down stream. It can be added that eye movement is not the only way to produce bi-lateral stimulation. A comparable effect can be accomplished with alternately tapping on either side of the body or alternate ear tones.
Desensitization refers to the process of reducing the emotional charge attached to the memory. This occurs whenever one is able to maintain a strong enough awareness of a “safe place” while simultaneously focusing on the disturbing event. The bi-lateral stimulation produced by the eye movement allows information to move across the corpus callosum, it is believed, so that the left hemisphere can put it into the perspective “that was then; this is now”.
Reprocessing refers to the process of exchanging the negative cognition, or “basic negative assumption” attached to the memory, in for the positive belief, the belief about the self that would be preferred and which is, in fact, the truth.
HOW EMDR WAS DEVELOPED
In 1987, psychologist Francine Shapiro made the chance observation (perhaps with REM cycles in mind) that eye movement can reduce the intensity of disturbing thought under certain conditions. Dr Shapiro studied this effect scientifically and, in 1989, she reported success using EMDR to treat victims of trauma in the Journal of Traumatic Stress. Since then, EMDR has developed and evolved through the contributions of therapists and researchers all over the world. Today, EMDR is a set of protocols that incorporate elements from many different treatment approaches.
SUMMARY
“Currently, there is not enough known about brain function to be able to explain with certainty how EMDR – or any other therapy for that matter – produces its effects. Having said that, we may hypothesize that negative life experiences or trauma are those which upset the biochemical balance of the brain's physical information processing system. This imbalance prevents the information processing from proceeding to a state of adaptive resolution with the result that the perceptions, emotions, beliefs, and meanings derived from the experience are, in effect, locked in the nervous system.
The EMDR methodology, as a form of Accelerated Information Processing, may unblock the brain's information processing system through a number of ways. It may tap into the same mechanisms used in learning and memory now identified with REM sleep. Another possibility is that blocked processing is manifested as phase discrepancies between equivalent areas in the brain's hemispheres and that the EMDR rhythmic intervention results in improved hemispheric communication with the result that the blocked material is finally processed (Nicosia, 1994). On the other hand, EMDR may initiate an orienting reflex change in neurophysiological functioning leading directly to desensitization.” (Francine Shapiro)