Emotional healing with EMDR therapy

By Rhonda Peppers, LPC

As a mental health professional for the past 28 years, I have had the opportunity to see many changes in the field. One that I find most revolutionary is the development of EMDR which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. 

EMDR is not really a new approach. It was developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. Since then, it has become an evidence-based practice and has even been adopted by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the treatment of PTSD. It is becoming more common practice as the documented benefits are rising and it is being successfully used for many mental health issues in addition to PTSD. 

The therapy approach has gotten recent exposure as celebrities such as Prince Harry, Sandra Bullock, and others have spoken publicly about their positive experiences with EMDR. It has even been referenced on popular TV shows such as “Grey’s Anatomy.”

If this article is the first time you have been introduced to EMDR, don’t feel alone. Until recently, there have been very few trained providers in Polk County area, or Arkansas for that matter. I’m hoping to bring awareness to our community about its benefits and how you might access services for yourself or someone you love. 

When I entered the mental health profession, the primary treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was to ask the client to talk about the traumatic event in depth, over and over, until the memory was no longer causing an emotional reaction. Unfortunately for many people, it continued to be “traumatizing” no matter how much it was discussed. And that technique has kept many people from seeking treatment because the thought of having to talk about it makes them uncomfortable. And let’s face it, some of us have experienced things that we never want to verbalize, much less share with a therapist we have just met. 

The most exciting thing about EMDR is that you don’t have to talk about it. PTSD is not a requirement to utilize this therapy. In my experience, most people don’t come into the clinic and say, “I need help with the bad things that happened to me.” Instead, they tell me they are miserable, and they don’t really know why. Common complaints are sadness, anxiety, irritability, chronic feelings of anger, extreme guilt, or feelings of shame. An EMDR therapist works with a client to find the root cause of those symptoms rather than just teaching ways to cope. The underlying issue may not be something that most people would consider to be a traumatic event. To an EMDR therapist, the definition of trauma is “anything that causes you to feel ‘stuck’ in life”. 

EMDR uses a process called bilateral stimulation (BLS), which means activating both the right side and the left side of the brain in a rhythmic and alternating manner. This can be accomplished with eye movements, auditory tones, or tapping. 

Eye movements are the gold standard and are similar to watching a game of ping pong. This back-and-forth eye movement imitates the eye movements that occur when we are in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. This stage of sleep is considered a time when the brain is highly active and organizes information from the day. Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and remembered where your lost keys were? If so, you were probably solving that problem in REM sleep. We can now use that natural healing process while we are awake. 

There are several theories about why EMDR is effective. A popular theory proposes that the brain stores memories differently when faced with a highly stressful event. Part of the memory may get stored alone, isolated from the brain’s natural ability to digest that information. Our brain needs to digest memories similar to the way our stomach digests food. Digestion breaks down food and absorbs the things that are useful, filtering out what isn’t needed. 

The brain digests memories by breaking them down into useful, manageable pieces of information. The memories that don’t get digested remain in their raw form and can cause you to relive negative experiences through body sensations, emotions, visual images, smells, thoughts, or beliefs related to the past event. 

For example, if you were in a bicycling accident, and now every time you see a person riding a bicycle your heart begins to race and you relive that accident. 

EMDR opens the memory network, allowing the brain to reprocess it and store it correctly. So now when you see a person riding a bicycle, your body doesn’t respond negatively because the brain identifies it as something that happened in the past and understands that there doesn’t need to be a physical or emotional response. 

If you are interested in learning more about EMDR and whether it is a right fit for you, please call Inspired Counseling at 479-437-7967 to discuss scheduling an assessment.

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Ethan Nahté

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