What is EMDR?
EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing) is a structured and scripted form of psychotherapy that is helpful for reducing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and panic with identifiable antecedents (triggers), and some other diagnoses. I am an EMDRIA-trained therapist.
Eye movements (or other forms of bilateral stimulation like butterfly tapping) seem to activate your problem-solving process, something that happens during REM sleep when your eyes are darting back and forth. By focusing on a specific problem, and both its negative and positive emotions, sensation, and beliefs, then adding bilateral stimulation, your brain begins problem solving. Since you are focused on the specific problem or memory, your brain is able to work through it more effectively than what would happen if it randomly comes up while you are sleeping. This can help reduce or eliminate automatic responses like Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn in normal, everyday situations where such responses are not useful, helpful, or productive.
The first sessions are very similar to traditional talk therapy. We get to know each other and I learn about your history, current situation, stressors, medications, and family history.
Together we will identify what helps you feel calmer if your nervous system is activated, and I will also teach you some new calming and grounding skills.
Once we both feel confident that you can regulate your emotions and nervous system without becoming overwhelmed, we will start talking about specific situations that cause you distress, and tracking that distress back to the earliest time in your life that you felt a similar distress. In this way we develop a list of incidences and experiences to target with EMDR processing.
A processing session begins with an agreement to process a target. I ask some questions to activate your nervous system, and then guide you through self-tapping in 15-20 second increments, asking what you notice after each set of tapping. Your job is simply to allow your mind to wander wherever it wants to during the tapping. My job is to lengthen or shorten the duration of tapping, and sometimes to direct you back to the target, or add something else to let your brain chew on, such as “just be curious about that.”
A processing session could be just 4 sets of tapping, or 12, or 20. It really depends on what is happening, and it is my role as a clinician to monitor this. In a 52 minute session, 8-12 sets of tapping is typical, but 20 isn’t unusual, either.
Processing sessions can be highly emotional, but also emotions tend to change every 15 seconds. If your thoughts and feelings aren’t changing during processing, it’s my job to notice this, and we’ll work together to figure out what is ‘blocking’ the processing. This is common, and not an indication that you, the client is doing anything wrong. The cool thing about EMDR processing is that there is no way for the client to do anything ‘wrong’ - it’s up to the clinician to identify a block and help figure out how to overcome it.
For more information about my practice or to schedule a free consultation (MN and TN telehealth) please see my home page, text me at 218-382-3622, or click the contact form to the right.
My contact form is HIPAA compliant and your information will be protected under HIPAA privacy laws. Contact forms are sent directly to me and will not add you to a mailing list. I will not use your contact information for advertising of any kind.
