Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)

Is EMDR effective?

EMDR is considered a gold-standard treatment for helping people address symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. According to decades of research, most people suffering from PTSD will experience significant symptom relief through EMDR (de Jongh et al., 2024). Additionally, EMDR tends to work faster than other approaches making it a more cost-effective approach to healing trauma than traditional talk therapies. Since it’s development, EMDR has been found to be effective at treating a variety of other mental health concerns including addiction, phobias, anxiety, despression, and childhood trauma.

EMDR may work for you if:

• you haven’t had luck with traditional talk therapy in the past due to the challenges of voicing your troubles, or

• you tend to ruminate, have flasbacks, engage in fear based behaviours that don’t make sense in the present, or suspect your symptoms may be related to a past trauma.

EMDR is not for everybody and depending on your unique situation, can take anywhere from 3 to 18+ sessions. Before beginning, we will have an in-depth discussion about your needs and whether EMDR is likely to be effective for you.

How does EMDR work?

Although the effectiveness of EMDR has long been verified by the research, we are still learning HOW EMDR helps people. At the foundation of EMDR is the Adaptive Information Processing (or AIP) model. The AIP model suggests that given the right conditions, people’s brains and nervous systems will naturally move towards health in the same way that a cut will heal on the skin without too much intervention as long as the right conditions are present (i.e. - the would is kept clean). Sometimes emotional or psychological trauma can get stuck in our system and the natural healing process is disrupted in the same way a cut might be disrupted from healing by some dirt or bacteria in the wound.

EMDR uses dual attention stimulation (DAS) to clear out whatever is blocking the trauma from healing. DAS simply means focusing on two things at one time. In EMDR, the client focuses on their trauma and some form of bilateral stiumulation. Often the bilateral stimulation is side-to-side eye movement but it can also be tapping or gentle hand-buzzing. This dual attention on the past and the present allows your brain to process the memory while staying firmly rooted in the present. For most, this is a gentler approach to working with trauma symptoms than other effective trauma approaches.