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Imagine you are trying to put a traumatic event behind you. Your therapist asks you to recall the memory in detail while rapidly moving your eyes back and forth, as if you are watching a high-speed Ping-Pong match. The sensation is strange, but many therapists and patients swear by the technique, called eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). Although skeptics continue to question EMDR's usefulness, recent research supports the idea that the eye movements indeed help to reduce symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Much of the EMDR debate hinges on the issue of whether the eye movements have any benefit or whether other aspects of the therapeutic process account for patients' improvement. The first phase of EMDR resembles the start of most psychotherapeutic relationships: a therapist inquires about the patient's issues, early life events, and desired goals to achieve rapport and a level of comfort. The second phase is preparing the client to mentally revisit the traumatic event, which might involve helping the person learn ways to self-soothe, for example. Finally, the memory processing itself is similar to other exposure-based therapies, minus the eye movements. Some experts argue that these other components of EMDR have been shown to be beneficial as part of other therapy regimens, so the eye movements may not deserve any of the credit. New studies suggest, however, that they do.
In a January 2011 study in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders, for example, some patients with PTSD went through a session of EMDR while others completed all the components of a typical EMDR session but kept their eyes closed rather than moving them. The patients whose session included eye movements reported a more significant reduction in distress than did patients in the control group. Their level of physiological arousal, another common symptom of PTSD, also decreased during the eye movements, as measured by the amount of sweat on their skin.
One of the ways EMDR's eye movements are thought to reduce PTSD symptoms is by stripping troubling memories of their vividness and the distress they cause. A study in the May 2012 Behaviour Research and Therapy examined the effectiveness of using beep tones instead of eye movements during EMDR. The researchers found that eye movements outperformed tones in reducing the vividness and emotional intensity of memories.
Those studies relied on self-reports of symptom severity, however, so researchers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands sought more objective confirmation of a change in vividness by also measuring participants' reaction times to fragments of a previously viewed picture. The work, published online in July 2012 in Cognition and Emotion, compared two groups of participants who had committed one detailed picture to memory. When asked to recall the picture and focus on it mentally, one group was instructed to perform eye movements. That group had slower reaction times to the familiar picture fragments in a subsequent memory test, and subjects reported that the vividness of the recalled pictures had decreased.
These studies and others from the past several years have helped validate EMDR—so much so that the American Psychiatric Association, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and the Departments of Defense and of Veterans Affairs have deemed it an effective therapy.
Yet how it works remains unclear. Chris Lee, a psychologist at Murdoch University in Australia and co-author of the January 2011 study, says a common theory is that EMDR takes advantage of memory reconsolidation: every time we recall a memory, it is changed subtly when we file it away again. For instance, parts of the memory may be left out, or new ideas and feelings are stored alongside of it. Making eye movements during recall, Lee explains, may compete with the recollection for space in our working memory, which causes the trauma memory to be less intense when recalled again.
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9 Comments
Add CommentDuring sleep we also experience rapid eye movements while mentally revisiting our experiences in our dreams. That may work better than any artificial therapy, both for the micro-traumas of the day and the serious ones.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you for writing this. EMDR continues to help millions around the world and yet one reads comments and articles that dismiss it without ever looking at the abundant and convincing research. It's EASY to have an automatic reaction to say that something seems too good to be true. What's hard is realizing that EMDR can help, while recognizing that it will be years, decades, or more before the actual mechanism in the brain is understood to a significant extent. Just because we don't know why it works doesn't mean it doesn't work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor anyone interested in more about EMDR, there are tons of great books on it and a new documentary film as well, online at emdrmovie.com.
Thank you again, SA, for writing this.
Well, perhaps the analogy with sleep patterns is precisely a key to understanding why EMDR has some effectiveness? Sleep is probably the most powerful therapy. In addition, shouldn't we be careful about forcing traumatic experiences into the background, sometimes only to resurface, instead of reasoning them out?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStill scientist are not sure how and why the TickleMe Plant moves and closes its leaves when you Tickle It.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee video
http://www.ticklemeplant.com
I have received EMDR therapy, and it has been amazingly effective. It brought out deeply buried emotions and memories and allowed them to be healed. These are issues that would probably never have been uncovered through other talk-based therapies. I have been in therapy for many years, and this method has been the most effective for me. I recommend it highly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswitold, you raise some interesting questions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResearch shows that people who have suffered intense trauma often have disturbed sleep patterns and don't achieve rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep cycles, therefore, they never have the opportunity to process heightened emotions from of the day. They may have nightmares and/or wake with night sweats, or have irregular sleep/wake patterns because they are waking in the night and can't go back to sleep or trouble getting to sleep. It all adds up to not achieving REM.
Treating trauma with EMDR is not sublimating or "forcing traumatic experiences into the background". It would be helpful if you read about the adaptive information processing model (AIP). You can find an excellent scholarly paper on EMDR and AIP by Francine Shapiro and Roger M. Solomon (2008) at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/springer/emdr/2008/00000002/00000004/art00009 and click on the PDF box to open the paper.
In addition to the great benefits of EMDR therapy, grounding exercises are terrifically helpful. You can use some of the techniques in Dr. Shapiro's new book "Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR." Dr. Shapiro is the founder/creator of EMDR but all the proceeds from the book go to two charities: the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Program and the EMDR Research Foundation). Anyway, the book is terrific. It's an easy read, helps you understand what's "pushing" your feelings and behavior, helps you connect the dots from past experiences to current life. Also gives lots of really helpful strategies that are used during EMDR therapy to calm disturbing thoughts and feelings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI frequently have unpleasant memories pop out at inconvenient times and have been working to change my mood and thoughts when it happens. Now I'm going to throw in eye wiggling into the mix to see what happens. Probably not while I'm driving though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow, bucketsofsquid, eye movements could certainly have an helpful effect on those intrusive unpleasant memories but I'm REALLY glad you're not trying it when you're driving. I have to agree with Dr. Patti, Getting Past Your Past is a great read. When situations are complex, it may take more than reading a book. If those memories don't stop, consider seeing a psychotherapist who uses EMDR.
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