Adapting EMDR techniques in the treatment of dysregulated or dissociative patients

Since its inception, EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing] has been understood by both clinicians and patients as a powerful vehicle for processing traumatic experience but one to be undertaken only when the patient has achieved some degree of stabilization (Shapiro, 1992). In DID and DDNOS patients, that baseline stability is also supposed to include a level of internal communication and consensus that would permit cooperation between parts of self about how to tolerate the memory processing and how to re-stabilize afterward. However, as any clinician who works with this population knows, some dissociative disorder patients never achieve that degree of internal coherence, and some have a long, rocky, tumultuous, exhausting road to travel before they get there. Faced with the DID or DDNOS patient who cannot tolerate affect or associations to traumatic memories; who cannot control switching, get grounded, or resolve internal struggles over power and control; who is unable to manage selfdestructive impulses; who cannot differentiate past and present experience; who is even unable to tolerate Resource Development (Korn & Leeds, 2002) or create a Safe Place inside—is there any way that EMDR can be helpful?

Conference

English

Janina A. Fisher

Fisher, J. A. (2000, November). Adapting EMDR techniques in the treatment of dysregulated or dissociative patients. Presentation at the International Society for the Study of Dissociation 17th Annual International Conference, San Antonio, Texas