EMDR Therapy

 

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing.

  • EMDR is a psychological therapy, that is suitable for adults, teenagers and children, including neurodivergent individuals.
  • is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the emotional distress resulting from difficult life experiences.

 

  • It can help with symptoms such as flashbacks, upsetting thoughts and images, depression and anxiety. 

It is a unique, powerful therapy that helps people recover from problems triggered by traumatic events in their lives.  It stops difficult memories causing distress by helping the brain to reprocess them properly.

 

EMDR therapy can help with a range of mental health issues in people of all ages, including symptoms such as flashbacks, upsetting thoughts and images, depression and anxiety.

 

EMDR can be used to help treat a variety of mental health problems like depression or anxiety, especially where a difficult life event has been involved. EMDR can be useful for people who have witnessed or experienced an event like a car accident, a violent crime, sexual or emotional abuse, bullying, a social humiliation or the sudden or complicated loss of a loved one, and are struggling to recover.

 

When a person is involved in a traumatic event, they may feel overwhelmed and their brain may be unable to fully process what is going on. The memory of the event seems to become “stuck” so that it remains very intense and vivid. The person can re-experience what they saw, heard and smelt and the full force of the distress they felt whenever the memory comes to mind.

 

EMDR aims to help the brain “unstick” and reprocess the memory properly so that it is no longer so intense.  It also helps to desensitise the person to the emotional impact of the memory, so that they can think about the event without experiencing such strong feelings.

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EMDR therapy includes insights such as:

  • Learning to understand what has happened to you in a more coherent way

  • Learning to recognise triggers and gain self-regulation

  • Grounding exercises to help you feel more stable and resourced

  • Brief neuroscience education to help you understand and recondition physiological responses

  • Dealing with flashbacks, flooding, numbing and nightmares

  • Breaking the cycle of re-enactment, re-victimisation and rescuing behaviour

  • How to move past your past and into the present and future

  • Clearing away guilt, shame and blame

  • Learning resilience

  • Time and support with your therapist for healing.

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EMDR is recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the World Health Organisation (WHO), which also recognises it as an effective treatment for children.

 

For more information see www.emdrassociation.org.uk