EMDR Therapy, we are big fans.
Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing.
Take it all in. Wait for it. What the? Yeah. We thought the same thing too at first, but having experienced the amazing results with two children, we are believers in EMDR. What is it though?! Below is a link to a website I found helpful in describing what this is in terms most everyone can understand. I have cut and pasted some of the definition below the link, so you can get some idea of what we are doing.
“EMDR is a form of therapy that integrates some new and unique techniques with many elements of traditional psychotherapies. In many forms of psychotherapy, clients are encouraged to explore past experiences which were distressing or even traumatic, with the goal of understanding how these experiences have affected them in the past in order to change how the experiences affect them in the future. In EMDR, the way the client works through or “reprocesses” earlier memories is unique, and from our experience, remarkably fast and powerful.
To understand how EMDR works, an analogy might be helpful. One of the brain’s main functions is to make sense of or “digest” our experiences, in a similar way that our stomach and intestines digest our food. Our digestive systems takes out nutrients from our food that our bodies need and then eliminates what we don’t need. In a similar fashion, the brain will take out what we need to understand or learn from our experience and then eliminate the rest – meaning we will discard or eliminate experiences that are not helpful to us. When an event or experience is particularly emotionally charged or traumatic, that event can be like a large piece of food stuck in our throats – it is too big to get down to the digestive tract. Psychologically, a similar thing happens with emotionally charged events, they are too large to be digested psychologically, and so they tend to remain “stuck” in our minds. EMDR is very helpful in getting charged experiences “unstuck” and ready for processing or being made sense of. EMDR also helps our minds understand old experiences in new ways, even if we did not believe that these old events were particularly emotionally charged.”
This form of therapy uses bilateral stimulation to help process the “stuck” memories and I believe this is what has made the difference. Here is more info from the website.
“The client receives bilateral stimulation of some kind while they process distressing material. Bilateral stimulation is providing some kind of sensory input (sounds, touch, vision) that is given in such a way so that the information goes to the two sides of the brain in an alternating sequence. This may sound complicated, but is really as simple as wearing headphones and hearing a sound alternate between the left and right ears; or having a hand buzzer vibrate in the right hand and then next in the left hand and so forth. While not entirely clear why, it appears that this bilateral stimulation is an important component of the procedure. There are several hypotheses about the mechanism by which bilateral brain stimulation is helpful. One hypothesis is that by stimulating the right and left hemispheres of the brain in sequence, this encourages the two hemispheres of the brain to more actively communicate with each other and so produces a more integrated experience. A second hypothesis for why the bilateral stimulation is effective is that the bilateral stimulation promotes a sense of dual awareness – of keeping the mind in the present moment while at the same time it goes somewhere else. This may reduce the distress associated with what is being processed, as well as help the mind remain open to processing the material in new and different ways.”
If you aren’t rolling your eyes and are still with me, let me just say that currently we are seeing amazing results in Hope with this therapy. Our goal is to alleviate the tremendous amount of anxiety she carries with her daily. Most of which centers around her “Gotcha Day” memory. May 14, 2012 was the day we met Hope. Since that day every 14th of the month hijacks her. Actually, a few days leading up to it and after, are extremely difficult for her. It is bizarre how this date has been haunting her month after month, coming up on almost 3 years now. With Hope’s improved speech we decided to try to take her to Ms. Michelle, an EMDR therapist, to see if we could get Hope some relief from the anxiety that plagues her. In just 4 sessions we have seen a dramatic drop in Hope’s anxiety level. Praise you Jesus! Guardedly optimistic is how I can best describe our feelings about what is happening with our sweet girl. It seems almost too incredible to believe. We are thankful for each day that she reports, “A tiny bit anxious, and 100% happy!” Day by day sweet Jesus until you return.
P.S. When I selected this photo for this blog I didn’t realize that it was actually taken at Ms. Michelle’s office. Hope, by the way, LOVES Ms. Michelle. Constantly she is asking me if we can go see Ms. Michelle. Thank you Jesus, for this wonderful woman, who loves children and works so beautifully with them.
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