EMDR Treatment: What makes EMDR an effective therapeutic approach?

A Quick Guide

EMDR treatment is a popular empirically tested psychotherapeutic approach for treating psychological disorders. It is particularly effective for alleviating impact of trauma memories or other negative experiences along with their associated symptoms.

Overlap of EMDR treatment with other therapies

According to Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR therapy, her treatment approach shares multiple characteristics with other popular psychotherapies. And this adds to its uniqueness and effectiveness as a treatment.

• Particularly, it incorporates attention to childhood or one’s past just like in psychodynamic therapy.
• It also pays attention to conditioned or learned responses/behavior like behavioral therapy.
• Furthermore, maladaptive cognitions and beliefs are modified and replaced with adaptive thoughts & beliefs. This is at the heart of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
• Similarly, the attention to emotions, bodily sensations, and imagery work is prominent in experiential, somatic, and hypnotic therapies.
• Finally, EMDR therapy also develops a contextual understanding of the person and his presenting problems which share characteristics with systems therapy.

Thus, an integration of EMDR therapy with other popular and already-established approaches in psychology adds to its effectiveness as psychotherapy.

EMDR treatment: The underlying paradigm

EMDR therapy is based on the underlying paradigm of information processing models and theories. According to it, distressing symptoms associated with traumatic memories can be alleviated when processed adaptively.

For example, in phantom limb syndrome, a person feels sensations and pain in the amputated body part. The possible reason for this is that memories of pain and sensations are stored in his somatic memories. So, this shows that it is a dysfunctionally stored memory that is not processed properly. Through EMDR therapy, these memories can be targeted and processed adaptively such that any negative emotions, thoughts, or physical sensations associated with the amputated limb can be relieved.

The information processing model

EMDR practices are based on the principles of information processing theories. This suggests that all human beings have an innate system that is geared or directed to process information to maintain a state of optimum mental health. (Just like the physical system of our body is geared to maintain our physical health).  It works continuously to relieve negative emotions and physical sensations and learns adaptive behavior and thoughts.

So, when this system is working fine, it processes troubling memories adaptively. However, when huge stressors or traumas take place either as a child or as an adult, it may get imbalanced. The memory of these may be rooted in a real event of the past. But since it is not processed properly, the person continues to respond to it emotionally and behaviorally in the present. Here, EMDR therapy works to restore that balance through its practices involving desensitization, insight, and cognitive restructuring.

A case example

A child was told he was inferior and incompetent. His father frequently repeated he would end up a failure and never amount to anything. This created feelings of guilt and shame in him. To gain his approval, he worked his hardest at school to get the best grades. Likewise, he developed a fear of making mistakes and the belief that he is a failure. Any time he did make mistakes, his father would disapprove of him, scold him, and beat him.

The child continued to carry on the emotions of these experiences to his workplace as an adult. Such that any time his boss would critique his work. r when he had to present his work to others, he would respond to it with performance anxiety. Along with feelings of guilt and shame for making mistakes. Here, EMDR treatment can help him to process these earlier memories. And modify his underlying belief to change his response for the better.  

We hope you found this article useful in learning more about Eye movement Desensitization & Reprocessing Therapy EMDR.