EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

Name: Tamie Pushlar, LCSW-R
Address: 903 Hanshaw Road, Suite 7, Ithaca, NY
Telephone: 607-342-5423

What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.
Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy, people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can, in fact, heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma.
If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.
Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.

Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session.
After the clinician determines which memory to target first, they ask the client to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and use their eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision. As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise, and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings. In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level.
For instance, a rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief that, “I survived it and I am strong.”
The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed; they have transformed.
As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, clients’ thoughts, feelings, and behavior become robust indicators of emotional health and resolution—without detailed discussion or homework used in other therapies.