If you haven’t heard of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) you soon will, and if you have, you might have tried it, and if you’ve tried it, it could have helped change your life.
Psychotherapists use EMDR as a way of treating a patient’s traumatic memories — among other things — and it’s pretty much the hottest thing on the block right now. As of 2012, there were over 60,000 trained EMDR clinicians and at least 2 million treated patients. And the field keeps growing and growing.
So what is it?
I asked EMDR specialist, writer, and speaker, Aundi Kolber, to tell me a little bit more about how this relatively new treatment is helping patients process traumatic memories, depression and anxiety. And why Christians shouldn’t fear it.
Read on…
WC: What is EMDR?
AUNDI KOLBER: EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It was originally discovered and researched by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1987.
Essentially, when something traumatic or disturbing occurs, we often don’t process it like normal memories. This is because it becomes stuck in our nervous system with all the original pictures, noises, smells, and feelings.
Since it is stuck in our bodies, it can easily be triggered by new events that remind us of the original event. This can be the reason for a lot of discomfort and negative emotions in our lives that we can’t seem to control. These intense feelings are really the emotions connected with the original experience being triggered.
EMDR utilizes eye movements or other bilateral stimulation (BLS) to stimulate both sides of the brain and body intermittently and help the nervous system become unlocked.
This then gives a person the opportunity to process a disturbing experience with their mind and body. That is what may be happening in REM or dream sleep and is the basic theory as to why EMDR is able to be effective. At its core, EMDR allows a person to process conscious and unconscious material, but ultimately it is the client’s own brain doing the work of processing—EMDR is simply helping to unlock a stuck nervous system.
WC: Skeptics might say “eye movements?” Has it been proven that those eye movements actually help?
KOLBER: Although the title is “eye movement,” it’s really based on bilateral stimulation (BLS) of a person’s body.
For some people, eye movement isn’t the ideal way to process and so they prefer tapping or sound. Ultimately, it’s less about whether it’s eye movement specifically, and more about the fact that it’s BLS.
It’s also important to note that EMDR isn’t appropriate for every single person.
However according to research, EMDR is shown to be more effective than Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 7 out of 10 studies.
WC: What kind of successes have you seen since you started using EMDR?
KOLBER: I have found EMDR to be a game changer for me in terms of my work as a therapist.
I have seen people who have experienced single event trauma and who don’t have a history of developmental trauma recover in as little as 6-8 sessions.
I have also seen folks recover from debilitating anxiety, exposure to suicide, and other disturbing events in a few months time. On the other hand, the more complex a person’s trauma, the longer our work is, even when EMDR is involved.
WC: WebMd says EMDR borrows “basic principles used in prolonged exposure therapy.” Could EMDR be a “shortcut” in dealing with the traumatic event?
Is that the appeal of it — that it might offer the same results as exposure therapy and CBT, but in a shorter time? Or are the results qualitatively stronger, as well?
KOLBER: I would agree that part of the appeal of EMDR is that it is a bit of a shortcut to processing. Ultimately, I would argue it’s a more effective way to processes difficult or disturbing memories.
Studies do tend to show that for trauma specifically, EMDR is showing to be more effective than trauma focused CBT.
Anecdotally, I would also offer that EMDR has the potential to be less re-traumatizing than other methods that rely on verbal processing. This is because EMDR doesn’t rely on the verbal aspect as much as it does the internal experience of the client.
For many people, it is helpful to avoid verbalizing every single aspect of a disturbing event.
WC: With the possibility of fairly quick results, do you think EMDR runs the risk of “promising too much, too soon?”
In other words, people usually don’t expect quick fixes with traditional therapy, but with all the anecdotal evidence of spectacular and sometimes fairly immediate results, does EMDR run the risk of contributing to cynicism from patients who don’t respond immediately? And then perhaps they leave therapy altogether?
KOLBER: I always like to encourage and remind people that EMDR is not a magic pill—it simply facilitates a process that allows our body to fully process memories/events/emotions that weren’t able to do that initially.
So yes, I think it’s important for clinicians to be as honest and direct as possible in regards to what they are seeing and helping a client to temper their expectations.
I think another important aspect of your question is making sure that a clinician has appropriately assessed a person for EMDR. Meaning, not every person is ready to immediately ready to begin EMDR when they start therapy. Sometimes it can take months or even years (in cases of complex trauma) to get a person to a place where they are ready to begin.
Ultimately, it’s important for therapists to do this front work with their clients so they can have the best opportunity to be successful.
WC: People think of EMDR as a way to process trauma, specifically, for PTSD. Are there any other applications? Can someone, for example, with anxiety or depression be helped by it? If so, I’ve read criticism that the EMDR community doesn’t apply “boundary conditions” with the practice. In other words, some proponents of it say there’s nothing it won’t help with. What’s your view on that?
KOLBER: I have found EMDR to be helpful with any issues that find roots in our nervous systems.
This tends to be true with anxiety, depression, toxic shame, adverse childhood experiences, and stressful life experiences. Ultimately, we are seeing EMDR can absolutely be used for any experience that is disturbing, whether we are overtly calling it trauma or not.
Now, in addition to EMDR a person may need to do other therapeutic work. This might include skills based techniques, verbal processing, or whatever else might equip them—yet EMDR certainly can be a part of an effective treatment process.
WC: The Atlantic began a (favorable) article on EMDR by saying: “It’s straight out of a cartoon about hypnosis.”
Some Christians are leery about hypnosis, or the idea of a therapist exercising a degree of control over them, or the idea that somehow they’re in a state of altered consciousness. What would you say to these Christians who are leery of EMDR but might really benefit?
KOLBER: I suppose the place I would start is to say that EMDR is not hypnosis. While I’m not trained in hypnosis, I do know that a person isn’t “present” while they are processing.
One of the primary differences with EMDR is something called “dual awareness” while a person is processing. This is essentially their knowing that while they are recalling a memory/emotion/event they are not completely there—they are also in the safe place with their therapist. In a sense, this is what makes healing possible, because the trauma has ended and therefore a client is coming to the event knowing they are not still in it. We wouldn’t want a person to be fully in their memory, otherwise this has the definite potential to be re-traumatizing for them.
Another important point is that during processing, the role of the therapist is not to influence the client, but rather to walk alongside them as they do the work of desensitizing a target that had been stuck and thus causing them distress. More than anything, the role of the therapist is to help create safety and to provide resources along the way as the client is doing their work.
To answer the last part of the question, it’s hard to know why there is so much resistance to EMDR inside the Christian community, but I suspect it’s partly because it can seem like we are relying on ourselves for healing instead of God.
As a Christian, I integrate EMDR with my own faith through the lens of understanding that God created our body with an internal system that moves toward processing. This is called the Adaptive Internal Processing (AIP) system. When trauma occurs, the AIP gets thrown offline and this is why the disturbance becomes stuck in our body. Similar to putting our spine back into alignment with a chiropractor, moving a disturbing experience through our body with EMDR allows us to return to neutral instead of hyper/hypo vigilant.
Because of this, we can then reflect on it, learn from it, and integrate into our experiences moving forward. I believe it’s God’s own goodness that gives us medicine to help us when we’re sick, and similarly God’s own goodness that gives us tools like EMDR.
Aundi Kolber is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC), writer, and speaker in Castle Rock, Colorado. She has received additional training in her specialization of trauma and body centered therapies, including the highly researched and regarded Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy.
Aundi is passionate about the integration of faith and psychology, and its significance for the Church today. She has written for Relevant, CT Women, (In) Courage, The Redbud Post, Her View From Home, Happy Sonship and more. As a survivor of trauma and a lifelong learner, she brings hard won knowledge around the work of change, the power of redemption, and the beauty of experiencing God in our pain. Aundi has been happily married to her best friend for over ten years and is the proud mom of Matia (6) and Jude (1).
You can follower her on Twitter here.
A couple comments:
EMDR has critics. Not because they think it’s ineffective, but because some claim “what works [about it] isn’t new, and what’s new doesn’t work.”
Meanwhile, its advocates say EMDR is superior to other methods for treating trauma, like exposure therapy.
Each side can claim some support. Some academic studies suggest EMDR is superior to methods like exposure therapy, while others suggest there’s no clear winner but that both are beneficial.
But both scientific research and anecdotal reports, and the larger psychotherapy field, as well, seem to be moving in the direction of EMDR as an extremely valuable tool in a therapist’s toolbox. (In fact, the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs have both “strongly recommended” EMDR for PTSD patients).
More resources on EMDR:
a. Find an EMDR specialist near you.
b. American Psychological Association on EMDR.
c. Scientific American: “EMDR: Taking a Closer Look: Can moving your eyes back and forth help to ease anxiety?”
d. The Permanente Journal: “The role of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy in Medicine: Addressing the Psychological and Physical Symptoms Stemming from Adverse Life Experiences.”
e. American Family Physician Journal: “Psychological Therapies for Chronic Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.”
f. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry: “Meta-analysis of the efficacy of treatments for Post-Traumatic stress disorder.”
g. Journal of Behavioral Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry: “A meta-analysis of the contribution of eye movements in processing emotional memories.”
h. Skeptical opinion piece on EMDR from Todd Kashdan.
i. The Atlantic: “Can Eye Movement Work Like Therpay? A controversial treatment shows promise, especially for victims of trauma.”
j. WebMD on EMDR.
