Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is an approach that emphasizes disturbing and charged memories as the cause of many psychological problems. If you are struggling with overwhelming life experiences that leave you overflowing with negative emotions each time you think about these, then EMDR is right for you. Our brains are designed with a self-healing mechanism to get over life’s minor and major disappointments or traumas. Many times, disappointments pile up; and at other times, certain traumas are too intense that they create a blockage to the self-healing process. These become like heavy baggage carried daily and affect healthy responses to upcoming new circumstances.
Using EMDR facilitates removing the blockages created and kick starts the flow of better processing of these past incidents to be better understood, learned from, and wipes the away the emotional negative feelings associated with these. EMDR was first used to help with the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but later proved effective for many other distressing issues. It is a set of standardized protocols that incorporates elements from many other approaches. Through eye movement (or any other form of bi-stimulation to the brain), the negative feelings or physiological arousal that are associated with past experiences are diminished and eventually cleared. Moreover, new more positive beliefs about the self replace old limiting beliefs that resulted as a consequence of these experiences.
EMDR works generally on emotional pain that has taken a long time, but not yet healed. We would be working systematically with incidents that still bother you to date. After identifying distressing memories, we start the process of dealing with each one by one. You’ll have decreased negative emotional responding, but increased insight regarding those events and more awareness of long held negative self-views. A new more positive set of positive beliefs emerges with healthier coping ways to deal with future circumstances. A comprehensive approach to dealing with all past negative experiences is usually optimal to have a transformed new better self that is more resilient to any new hardship.
You can watch my interview on EMDR and more details about it here: