Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in the 21st century

In 35 years, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy has evolved from Francine Shapiro’s chance personal discovery to becoming one of the leading psychotherapy treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) worldwide. EMDR treats the whole person – their cognitions, their emotions, their body, and their stored traumatic memories. Grounded in Shapiro’s adaptive information processing (AIP) model, EMDR proposes that traumatic memories are incorrectly stored and need to be reprocessed for symptoms to resolve and learning to occur. The EMDR therapist activates the patient’s innate self-healing process. It also uses dual attention awareness, one foot in the present and one foot in the past, in the form of bilateral stimulation of the brain to help keep patients in the window of tolerance. New research shows that overloading working memory while reprocessing traumatic memory could lead to even greater speed, efficiency, and cost savings. While EMDR is currently recommended by the World Health Organization and the Institute of Traumatic Stress Studies for the treatment of PTSD, the new ICD-11 diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress (C-PTSD), which includes “disorders of the self,” presents new clinical challenges. Continued research needs to be conducted in the form of randomized control trials (RCTs) in PTSD treatment while also developing new protocols and techniques for C-PTSD.

Book Section

English

Noora Niskanen

Niskanen, N. (2024). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in the 21st century. In Evan Senreichn, Shulamith Lala Ashenberg Straussner, and Jordan Dann (Eds.), Experiential Therapies for Treating Trauma (pp. 157-172). New York, NY: Taylor and Francis