Austin EMDR

The following video is a brief introduction to EMDR.

What happens when you are traumatised?

Most of the time, your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when you are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car accident) or repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g. childhood neglect), natural coping mechanisms can become overloaded. This overload can result in disturbing experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being "unprocessed". These are stored in the limbic system of your brain which maintains these traumatic memories in an isolated memory network that is associated with emotions and physical sensations disconnected from the brain’s cortex where we store memories. These can be continually triggered when experiencing events similar to those traumatic experiences. Those painful feelings from the past such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are triggered in the present. Your ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can therefore become inhibited. EMDR helps create connections which enables your brain to process traumatic memory in a very natural way.

What is EMDR?

Francine Shapiro developed Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) in 1987, utilizing the mind's natural process to heal itself in order to successfully treat Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). EMDR has been used to effectively treat a wide range of mental health problems:

  • anxiety and panic attacks

  • depression

  • stress

  • phobias

  • sleep problems

  • complicated grief

  • addictions

  • pain relief, phantom limb pain

  • self-esteem and performance anxiety

How long does treatment take?

EMDR can be brief focused treatment or part of a longer psychotherapy programme. EMDR sessions can be for 60 to 90 minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions about EMDR

  • You will be asked specific questions about a particular disturbing memory. Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist's finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field. Sometimes, a bar of moving lights or headphones are used instead. The eye movements will last for a short while and then stop. You will then be asked to report back on the experiences you have had during each of these sets. Experiences during a session may include changes in thoughts, images and feelings.

  • With repeated sets of eye movements, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses its painful intensity and simply becomes a neutral memory of an event in the past. Other associated memories may also heal at the same time. This linking of related memories can lead to a dramatic and rapid improvement in many aspects of your life.

  • Not at all. During EMDR treatment, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. Throughout the session, I will support and facilitate your own self-healing and intervene as little as possible. Reprocessing is usually experienced as something that happens spontaneously, and new connections and insights arise quite naturally from within. As a result, most people experience EMDR as being a natural and very empowering therapy.

  • EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment which has successfully helped over a million individuals. The validity and reliability of EMDR has been established by rigorous research. There are many controlled studies into EMDR making it the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma.