My EMDR Therapist Helped Decrease My Anxiety

I've been seeing a therapist for a while to help decrease my anxiety. We generally just talk, but, today, we tried something new. Well, it was new for me, anyway. He's been using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for a number of years with his other clients. We did a session today using EMDR, and my therapist really helped me decrease my anxiety levels.

What is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy?

[caption id="attachment_3269" align="alignright" width="260"] EMDR hand tappers. Image courtesy of CollenWest.com.[/caption]

EMDR is a type of therapy designed to reduce or eliminate the pain caused by traumatic experiences. It was developed to treat the signs and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a type of disorder where sufferers are plagued by intrusive thoughts and/or feelings concerning traumatic events from the past. People can develop PTSD after experiencing things like combat, natural disasters (hurricanes, for example), childhood abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. By the way, the examples I just gave are by no means comprehensive. People get PTSD for lots of other reasons, too.

How Does a Therapist Use EMDR?

EMDR combines talk therapy, mindfulness to calm anxiety, and alternating stimulation of the right and left sides of the brain. This is accomplished via tracking the movement of the therapist's hand with the eyes from side to side. This is the "eye movement" part of EMDR, although the right/left stimulus can also be done using "tappers," which are small devices which gently vibrate against the palms of the hands. Some EMDR therapists use headphones with a tone that alternates from ear to ear.

There are, of course, variations in how different therapists conduct an EMDR session. Below is a brief transcript of the session my therapist did with me to help reduce my anxiety:

Therapist: Can you define the current issue that's causing you anxiety?

Me: I'm afraid I'm always going to be alone. I will die alone.

Therapist: Do you have a visual image about this issue?

Me: Yes. I see myself as an old man on my deathbed, lying on a bare mattress in an empty, dirty room with bare walls and a hardwood floor. I'm looking down on this scene as if I'm floating near the ceiling.

Therapist: On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being absolutely true and one being not at all true, how true does the statement "I will always feel alone" feel to you right now?

Me: About an eight.

Therapist: Instead of " I will always be alone," what would you like to believe instead?

Me: That I'm part of something larger than myself. That I'm connected and loved.

Therapist: On a scale of one to seven, with seven being absolutely true and one being not at all true, how true does the statement "I am part of something larger than myself. I am connected and loved" feel to you right now?

Me: About a two.

My therapist then turned on the little hand tapper thingies. I closed my eyes and focused on the anxiety that I would always be alone, and that I would die alone. He encouraged me to notice any thoughts, emotions, images, or sensations that came up while the tappers vibrated gently back and forth in my hands -- left, right, left, right. We did about six "sets" of this work with the tappers. Each set was about two minutes long. In between sets, we talked about what had come up for me during the previous set.

The "trueness" of my feeling that I would always be -- and die -- alone had dropped from an eight to a three by the end of the session. My feeling about belonging and being part of something larger than myself had risen from a two to a seven.

How Does EMDR Help Decrease Anxiety?

It's not known exactly how EMDR helps to decrease anxiety, depression, or PTSD. It's theorized that the back and forth movement of the eyes (or other induced left/right stimuli) helps the brain reprocess painful events in such a way that the person begins to have a new, less "charged" experience of them. EMDR also calms and soothes the body during the recollection of past traumas, which takes some of the edge off them, i.e. desensitization.

Although I'm new to using EMDR, my therapist used it very effectively to reduce my anxiety. EMDR seemed to somehow get at the painful emotions beneath my anxious thoughts in a way that just talking about them never has before. My therapist and I plan to keep using EMDR to decrease my anxieties and the hidden traumas that drive them.

Please share your own experiences with EMDR therapy in the comments. I'd love to hear from you.

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