EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) is designed especially to treat the symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, such as startle responses, nightmares, anxiety, and avoidance behaviors. It also can be helpful to clear persistent and negative memories and obsessive worry. EMDR is a technique that targets specific memories and/or thought processes, then activates the two hemispheres of the brain, usually by having the eyes move rapidly right and left, following the therapist’s fingers. In this way “unfinished business” can be resolved. Although it is not known specifically how it works, it seems to allow the mind to become “desensitized” and to “reprocess” traumatic memories that have never moved from short term memory to long term memory integration. Traumatic memory that has not been fully “processed” can be intrusive and suddenly triggered, causing a person to react as if the event just happened recently. With appropriate integration and re-processing, the traumatic memory is seen and experienced in the past tense, and the person is no longer triggered in the present.
NOTE: EMDR is designed to be integrated into ongoing psychotherapy and should not be used in single sessions.