EMDR with autism and neuro-diverse presentations

Kleinhans (2009) reports that individuals with autism tend to experience over arousal or hyper excitability of the amygdala, which plays a key role in regulating emotions.  Van Steensel and Heeman (1999) report that as children with Autism grow, they encounter higher social expectations to adapt to their surroundings, consequently becoming more aware of their own social difficulties, leading to an increase in stress and anxiety.   Taking the nature of emotions as being largely unpredictable, the autistic individual may ‘survive' in a highly anxious state which in some cases may be require extended preparation prior to processing any additional traumas. The EMDR Autism Protocol is a procedural model developed to help the autistic individual regulate and survive the anxiety experienced by the challenges of living in a non-predictable world.  By creating an emotional vocabulary and then creating paired responses to overwhelming emotions, the autistic individual becomes better able to navigate the world and therefore better able to self-regulate, making EMDR much more accessible to the neurodiverse and autistic client.

Conference

English

Susan Darker-Smith

Darker-Smith, S. (2023, May). EMDR with autism and neuro-diverse presentations. Virtual presentation at the EMDRAA Conference, Melbourne Victoria, Australia