What is EMDR?

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy developed to help people recover from the lasting effects of traumatic experiences, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Trauma can follow events such as physical or emotional abuse, assault, accidents or combat. For many people, EMDR brings relief in a shorter time than talking therapy alone.

Using guided eye movements, it helps the brain reprocess a distressing memory.

A helpful way to understand it is to think about how the body heals a physical wound. When you have a cut, the body works to close it. If a foreign object stays in the wound, or the injury keeps being reopened, it stays raw and continues to cause pain. Emotional trauma can work in a similar way. A disturbing event can create a kind of blockage in how the memory is stored, so we keep re-experiencing it. EMDR helps to clear that blockage so healing can begin.

How does it work?

The aim of EMDR is to process difficult experiences and let them settle into a more balanced perspective. It follows an eight-phase protocol designed to resolve the painful emotions, beliefs and reactions tied to an experience, and leave you with a steadier understanding of it.

The therapy uses sets of eye movements to help the brain reprocess the memory, drawing on the same biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep. The approach was developed by Dr Francine Shapiro, who observed that the distress attached to a difficult memory tends to ease naturally when a person recalls parts of it while making certain lateral eye movements. Over time, this can change how a painful event feels on an emotional level.

For example, someone who has survived an assault may shift from feelings of horror and self-blame towards "I survived, and I am strong."

EMDR works across past, present and future: it attends to the original memory and related events, eases current distress, and helps build the responses you want to carry forward.

What can it help with?

EMDR is best known and most strongly evidenced for PTSD. It has also been used to support people experiencing:

• Panic attacks
• Complicated grief
• Disturbing or intrusive memories
• Phobias
• Performance anxiety
• Chronic pain
• Stress

If you think EMDR might help you, a qualified therapist can talk you through whether it is a good fit.