Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing
EMDR Therapy in West Sussex, Burgess Hill, Lindfield Online
EMDR is a NICE recommended psychological therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It operates on the principle of leveraging the body's natural healing mechanisms to address PTSD symptoms.
Traumatic experiences can overwhelm the brain's processing mechanism, causing memories of the event to remain unprocessed and frozen. This can manifest in symptoms like flashbacks and nightmares, which recreate the distressing event along with its associated emotions and thoughts.
EMDR aids in processing these distressing memories by unblocking and reprocessing them, thereby reducing their intensity and emotional impact. It simulates Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, a natural part of our sleep cycle during which daily events are processed. By rapidly shifting attention from side to side, EMDR may disrupt working memory, allowing trauma memories to be processed with less intensity and enabling their recall and processing to be more manageable.
Techniques used in EMDR to replicate REM or shift attention include following a rapidly moving light source, using auditory cues to shift attention, or tapping on hands from one side to the other.
© Jeanette Stanton
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