Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

EMDR is a structured psychotherapy that focus briefly on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (typically eye movements), which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an extensively researched, effective psychotherapy method proven to help people recover from trauma and PTSD symptoms. After successful treatment with EMDR therapy, affective distress is relieved, negative beliefs are reformulated, and physiological arousal is reduced.

Why EMDR used:
EMDR therapy doesn’t require talking in detail about the trauma or the distressing issue. EMDR instead focuses on changing the emotions, thoughts or behaviours that result from a distressing experience (trauma). This allows your brain to resume a natural healing process.
While many people use the words “mind” and “brain” when referring to the same thing, they’re different. Your brain is an organ of your body. Your mind is the collection of thoughts, memories, beliefs, and experiences that make you who you are.
Trauma is like a wound that your brain hasn’t been allowed to heal. Because it didn’t have the chance to heal, your brain didn’t receive the message that the danger is over. The brain can go “offline” and there’s a disconnect between what you experience (feel, hear, see) and what your brain stores in memory through language.
When you undergo EMDR, you access memories of a trauma event in very specific ways. Combined with eye movements and guided instructions, accessing those memories helps you reprocess what you remember from the negative event. That reprocessing helps “repair” the mental injury from that memory. Remembering what happened to you will no longer feel like reliving it, and the related feelings will be much more manageable.