Eye Motion Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a potent trauma treatment developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro (left).
"EMDR is effective and well-supported by research evidence for treating children with symptoms accompanying post-traumatic stress (PTSD), attachment issues, dissociation, and self-regulation," GoodTherapy.org recently reported: http://www.goodtherapy.org/blo...ective-is-it-0430155
It used to be thought that EMDR is best used on “incident trauma,” traumas due to one or any finite number of incidents, such as battlefield horrors, car accidents, rape, or other adult life threats. I also use EMDR to calm myself, by sitting with eyes closed and simply moving my eyes back and forth while focusing on the upsetting thought – until it dissipates. This works well with upsetting incidents in the present, such as arguments in which I don’t feel understood. I also use EMDR to heal grief over specific past incidents such as hurtful acts by others.
EMDR had been thought to be iffy, however, for developmental trauma, which starts with fetal stress “when the sperm hits the egg” and continues while the infant brain is developing until age three or so. As Dr. Bessel van der Kolk notes, in developmental trauma, discrete incidents are not the issue; instead, there’s a continuum of panic until we become a “frightened organism.” Dr. Shapiro and Dr. van der Kolk have said that in developmental trauma, EMDR may bring up deep feelings from infancy so overwhelming as to be re-traumatizing. [FN1]
But more recently, Dr. Sandra Paulsen and collaborators have reported success with EMDR to heal developmental trauma, and documented it in their authoritative 2014 book “Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Toward an Embodied Self.” [FN2] Dr. Paulsen and Dr. Katie O’Shea have developed new methods carefully geared to the special dangers of developmental trauma, summarized on Dr. Paulsen’s website: http://www.bainbridgepsychology.com/EarlyTraumaOShea.html.
Dr. Paulsen’s collaborator Dr. D. Michael Coy details how he keeps patients safe while going deep into infancy with EMDR on his website: https://www.dmcoy.com/main/my_...r-pre-verbal-trauma/.
See also Dr. Coy’s comments on my original EMDR blog from March 2015.
He also provides a link to the EMDR International Association’s EMDR therapist finder directory: http://www.emdria.org/search/custom.asp?id=2337
And so I still say, as in my book title, “Don’t Try This at Home.” Please do not “do it yourself.” Get a highly-trained attachment therapist and/or EMDR specialist with a lot of specific training in your type of trauma.
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Kathy’s blogs expand on her book “Don't Try This at Home: The Silent Epidemic of Attachment Disorder—How I accidentally regressed myself back to infancy and healed it all.” She explores her journey of recovery by learning the hard way about Adult Attachment Disorder, Adult Attachment Theory, and the Adult Attachment Interview.
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Footnotes
FN1 Francine Shapiro, PhD, “The Power of EMDR to Treat Trauma,” April 17, 2013 and Bessel van der Kolk, MD, “Expanding the Perspective on Trauma,” April 24, 2013, webinars by the National Institute for Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM): http://www.nicabm.com/trauma2013/trauma2013-post/
FN2 “Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Toward an Embodied Self,” by Lanius, Paulsen, and Corrigan, 2014, http://www.amazon.com/Neurobio...bodied/dp/0826106315
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