A trauma is any experience that leaves a negative impression on our consciousness. These emotional events can be seemingly forgotten, especially if they happened during childhood, but present in our brain. This can provoke that some event reactivates them and the symptoms reappear, unbalancing our way of being in the world, our relationships and our health.
What is EMDR therapy?
This technique offered at Neuroscenter was created in 1987 by Dr. Shapiro and is currently one of the psychotherapeutic treatments most supported by scientific studies and by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The objective of this therapy is to desensitize to reduce the disturbance associated with negative memories and to reprocess psychological traumas in an effective and natural way.
EMDR is related to eye movements during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, where the emotionally relevant experiences of the day are processed. The brain stores and processes them in its extensive brain data bank.
When a person suffers a traumatic experience, the brain creates a kind of “neurological knot” because it is unable to process the event. In fact, it is believed that when a person has a nightmare, the brain is trying to process a traumatic memory.
In short, EMDR seeks to eliminate those patterns created to avoid the pain of trauma and is especially effective for post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD).
However, it has proven to be effective in the treatment of anxiety problems, depression, panic attacks, grief, phobias, social fear, self-esteem problems, improvement of sports performance, etc.
What does the therapy consist of?
The client is asked to recall a traumatic situation or experience. The client is then helped to move the eyes in a certain way, so that the brain receives the necessary help to process and file the experience. In this way, the negative charge associated with the event is lost, and in many cases the positive memories linked to it that could not be perceived before are recovered.
This does not mean that the experience will be erased, but that it can be remembered as an event that happened but that no longer affects day to day life.
EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation through eye movements to stimulate one brain hemisphere at a time. This stimulation can be:
- Visual: the patient moves the eyes from one side to the other guided by the therapist.
- Auditory: the person listens to sounds on a regular basis, alternating in both ears.
- Kinesthetic: gentle tapping is performed alternately on the knees, shoulders or hands of the patient.
In this way, it is possible to stimulate and establish a connection between the two cerebral hemispheres, the more emotional right side is integrated in a natural way with the more cognitive left side. Everything that remained blocked, always provoking the same symptomatology when reliving it, after EMDR finds meaning and logic and therefore does not affect as before.
The therapy does not only seek to free the patient from their current symptoms, but by working with their past, future and present, it seeks to connect with their internal resources to achieve a better functioning, both in the present and in the future.
For more information about EMDR therapy contact a specialist in Psychology.