EMDR Therapy - Dov Wills, LMHC

EMDR therapy provides a way for the brain to heal itself naturally. Our brains naturally heal through sleep, similar to how our bodies do. Francine Shapiro developed a therapy approach that taps into this natural occurence during sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) to treat trauma in people. Since then, it has effectively been used to treat a wide range of mental health symptoms, such as anxiety, phobias, and grief and loss.

What is an EMDR session like?

EMDR provides a framework for your brain to heal itself. We first do a thorough assessment and discuss what goals you have for therapy. We then use a technique that provides bilateral stimulation, which can be moving your eyes from left to right, tapping yourself from left to right, or holding tappers that buzz from left to right. You will be asked to do this for a short time period and then stop. You will then be asked what you noticed during the bilateral stimulation. This usually consists of any body sensations, memories, images, or thoughts. As we repeat the bilateral stimulation in this manner the memory tends to change in a way that causes it to lose its intensity and to feel more like a bad memory of an event in the past. We do not have to do this with every traumatic memory you have, as often many resolve as we focus on the first one or the worst one. This can lead to a dramatic and rapid improvement in many aspects of your life.

During EMDR therapy, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. This is not a form of hypnosis, and you can stop the process at any time. The therapist intervenes as little as possible. This experience is usually experienced very organically as new neural networks and insights arise quite naturally.

Anecdotally, I, Dov, was told of a person during my EMDR training who was seeing their therapist for a fear of driving over bridges. After a session or two of EMDR therapy, the client reported having gone shopping in a nearby town. The therapist exclaimed, "To get there, you had to cross the Narrows Bridge!!!" The client was equally as surprised to notice how organically her fear had resolved.

For further information about EMDR, check out www.emdria.org or www.emdr.com