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EMDH – behind this incomprehensible abbreviation lies an equally mysterious method of getting rid of even the most severe mental trauma – desensitization and processing by eye movement. Facts, versions and explanations.
“Sometimes it’s like some kind of force pushes us out of our usual lives, forcing us to change,” says Francine Shapiro. “But changes are so abrupt and tragic, as it happened to me, that we ourselves are unable to cope with them.”
At the age of 36, Francine, having just defended her doctoral dissertation in English literature, found out that she had cancer. An operation, a divorce from her husband, a long treatment – all these events changed her life forever.
The disease subsided, but Francine seemed to be frozen between life and death: she was tormented by constant fears and obsessive anxious thoughts, nightmares haunted her at night, and during the day everything fell out of her hands.
One day, while walking in the park, she noticed that some of the thoughts that bothered her all the time had disappeared. Focusing on them again, Francine realized… that she was not afraid!
When she returned to anxious thoughts, her eyes began to move involuntarily.
“I was shocked. When I moved them intentionally, the pain of the heavy memories disappeared. Moreover, feelings and thoughts in the style of “I am powerless”, “something is wrong with me” were replaced by others: “this is all in the past”, “I have a choice,” she recalls.
Shapiro asked friends, colleagues, and participants in a psychology seminar she attended to do the same exercise. The results were astonishing: the level of anxiety was reduced, people were able to more realistically perceive what bothered them. So by chance in 1987 a new technique of psychotherapy was discovered.
This event prompted Francine Shapiro to study psychology and complete her thesis in clinical psychology. For several years she has been working at the Institute for Brain Research in Palo Alto (USA). In 2002, she was awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize, the world’s most important award in the field of psychotherapy.
Shapiro gave a detailed description of a unique psychotherapeutic technique – the EMDH technique, which is especially effective in the treatment of emotional traumas, in the book Psychotherapy of Emotional Traumas Using Eye Movements. Basic principles, protocols and procedures”.
What is DPG
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Trauma Processing) is a psychotherapeutic technique most often used in the treatment of emotional trauma. Eye movements start the process of natural healing of the human psyche. Since the traumatic event blocks the processes of her self-regulation, the feelings, images, thoughts associated with the painful experience seem to “get stuck” in her. And thanks to DPDH, they begin to be processed at an accelerated rate.
EMDR as a way to work with trauma
Francine Shapiro called her technique the “Eye Movement Desensitization and Trauma Treatment Technique” (EMT). The word “desensitization” can be translated as “desensitization”.
Psychotherapists around the world today, in addition to classical methods, use it in their work with those who have experienced emotional trauma, sexual violence, the horrors of war, have been victims of a terrorist attack, natural disasters, or have seen the death of other people.
“Such situations go beyond the ordinary experience of a person,” explains psychotherapist Natalia Rasskazova. “If such a traumatic event happened at a time when a person was especially vulnerable, his psyche cannot cope with this experience on its own.”
Months and even years later, he may be haunted by obsessive thoughts and painful memories. Their images are so vivid that every time a person feels the realism of what is happening: he does not just remember, but again and again experiences the same horror, pain, fear and helplessness.
The DPDH technique in just a few sessions can improve the condition. It also helps in the treatment of various phobias, addictions, depression, anorexia and even schizophrenia at the initial stage of this disease. There are few contraindications: severe mental conditions, some diseases of the heart and eyes.
If eye work is difficult
In some eye conditions (eg, severe myopia) or in situations where watching the therapist’s hand is associated with traumatic memories (eg, parental slapping of the child’s face as a child), the therapist uses hand tapping or sounds as a stimulus. .
Tapping on the hand is performed as follows: the patient sits down with his hands on his knees, palms up. The therapist (with one or two fingers) alternately rhythmically taps on them. With sound stimulation, he snaps his fingers at one or the other ear of the client at about the same speed as with a series of eye movements.
How DPG is used at work
Directed eye movement is the basis of this technique. “Most of us find it difficult to voluntarily control the muscles responsible for eye movements,” explains Francine Shapiro. “It is easier to continue these movements by focusing on the therapist’s hand.”
He usually holds his fingers, pencil, or ruler vertically, 30 to 35 centimeters from the patient’s face. He, concentrating on a painful memory or sensation and without interrupting the story, at the same time follows the therapist’s hand with his eyes.
Artem is 22 years old, ten years ago he was walking in the park with his mother and brother when they were attacked by hooligans. “All these years I was tormented by terrible memories,” says Artem, “and I had the same nightmare: I’m trying to escape from something terrible, but I can’t move and I feel like I’m falling into some kind of deep, narrow hole …
I began to shun communication with new people, it seemed to me that everyone was looking at me with condemnation, as if they were saying: “You are a nonentity, you could not protect yourself and your family.”
During the first meeting, the therapist asked him to remember the most terrible episode
Artyom thought about the moment when one of the attackers took out a knife. “I focused on this scene, following the wand that the therapist held in front of my eyes from left to right.
It seemed that I was about to begin to suffocate, as it was before, but I kept seeing the therapist’s hand, and it seemed to hold me. A few minutes later, the therapist asked again about what I was seeing and feeling. I described the same scene again, but I felt that the previous emotions had disappeared: I didn’t feel so hurt.”
“There is no magic here,” explains Natalia Rasskazova. – Artem continues psychotherapy, but the first meetings, in which the therapist worked with the help of the EMDH technique, made it possible to remove the sharpness of the experience: in a few sessions, the perception of what happened to him changed.
His feeling of “I am a coward and a nonentity” was replaced by confidence: “It is not a shame to survive.” Thanks to the EMDR technique, a tragic event becomes one of the many facts of a person’s life, memories are no longer accompanied by strong negative emotions.
The controversy surrounding the DDG
From the very moment of its inception, the DPG technique has been the subject of active scientific controversy.
“Many professionals find it difficult to accept that our brain can be “rebooted,” explains Jacques Roque, vice president of the French Association of Psychotherapists Practicing EMDR. Until now, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have proceeded from the fact that only words that one person uttered and another heard can heal.
Psychological problems were talked about only in terms of meanings: for those who survived the trauma, it was a meeting with death. But today we understand that the biological work of the brain plays the most important role in healing: the psyche is inseparable from its neurological “carrier”.
It is possible to restart information processing, sometimes in exotic ways that go against conventional wisdom that healing takes time. Maybe we just find it hard to come to terms with the fact that our brain, like any computer, can be reprogrammed?
The principle of operation of the DPD
There is no single answer to the question why this technique is so effective. Psychologists and neuroscientists study and test several hypotheses. The first of these is a model of accelerated information processing. Francine Shapiro suggests that the mind, like the body, has an innate ability to self-regulate.
“The brain involuntarily processes all the information about what is happening to us, what worries and worries us,” explains Natalya Rasskazova. – It encodes the data, neutralizes it and sends it to storage. This allows the psyche to adapt to a variety of situations.
But physical and mental trauma, stress block the processes of natural self-regulation. Emotions, images, thoughts, sensations associated with painful memories seem to be stuck in the memory as they were at the time of the traumatic events. As a result, a person not only cannot forget them, but it becomes difficult for him to remember his positive feelings.”
Eye movements activate the natural healing forces of the body itself: they start processes that unblock the neural networks of the brain.
Traumatic experience is “stored” in them, and it begins to be rapidly processed.
Francine Shapiro does not exclude that the EMDR technique also activates the processes in the brain that occur in it during the “REM” phase, which is accompanied by active eye movement. At this point, the brain processes the information received during wakefulness and stores it in memory.
In addition, studies show that the EMDR technique synchronizes the rhythms of the cerebral hemispheres. “They process emotions differently,” continues Natalya Rasskazova. The left hemisphere deals with what causes positive emotions, the right hemisphere processes negative experiences.
If we direct our gaze to objects located to our right, this will cause a more positive emotional response than fixing our gaze on objects located to our left. And eye movements from side to side cause alternate activation of the hemispheres and synchronous processing of information.
Who can use this technique at work?
As with any psychotherapy, the client’s state of mind may change between sessions. He may “surface” memories of other unpleasant events, for example, from early childhood. That is why only psychotherapists or clinical psychologists who can, if necessary, provide emergency assistance, including medical assistance, should use the EMDR technique.
“But even a well-trained specialist cannot guarantee success when using the EMDR technique with every person,” cautions Francine Shapiro. It is not a panacea and is most often used in combination with other therapies. But, of course, EMDP helps to relieve the acuteness of the experience in just a few meetings.”