An essential part of EMDR treatment is the use of ‘bilateral stimulation’ of the brain. This improves communication with the left and right sides of the brain.

Your therapist will have you think about the different aspects of the traumatic event and difficult feelings surrounding it. To help your brain to fully process the trauma and begin to heal, your EDMR therapist will have you focus, in brief moments, on the trauma memory while you look left and right in a specific order (or you may be asked to tap your hands, or listen to sound in headphone) and that is called bilateral stimulation!

Bilateral stimulation can be achieved by using a variety of methods including eye movements (that helped to name this therapy). After a few seconds, your eye movements or other right-left stimulation are stopped and you will be asked to tell your therapist what you noticed.

This special technique helps the brain to access traumatic memories through stimulation. The left/right movements help to interrupt focus on the traumatic event and your original responses. Bilateral stimulation draws attention to your current environment, confirming you are no longer in danger. That helps your brain to process this new information and lowers the stress response overall within your nervous system. 

WHAT TO EXPECT DURING EMDR THERAPY

EMDR Therapy sessions are usually 50 – 90 minutes in duration or longer if required (adjunct or intensive EMDR programs). To get the full benefit you’ll most likely need to have consistent appointments for several sessions before you begin to experience substantial changes.

EMDR is well structured and your therapist will talk you through each of the phases of treatment. 

You’ll begin with sharing your personal history, this will include traumatic events as well as your medical background. Following this you two will talk about what specific emotional triggers you want to work on and from there a treatment plan will be developed.

 Next you will learn coping skills to help support you during the EMDR process (and during normal life) so that as feelings arise, you’ll stay present and aware and will be able to communicate your needs to your therapist. After your counsellor is sure that you are ready, then they will assess your specific traumas and triggers. 

You may be asked to participate in guided visualization and be asked to connect with body sensations related to the challenging memories. The therapist is going to have you turn into the positive and negative emotions surrounding the trauma and you’ll be prompted to rate those emotions so that there is a clear sense of what is normal for you in regards to your emotional regulation.

Next comes the more active EMDR treatment. Your therapist will encourage you to think about the traumatic memory at the same time moving your eyes back and forth (or another form of bilateral stimulation). As this happens you’ll use the coping skills that your therapist has helped you to learn for any overwhelming feelings that may come up. 

You set the pace for this process and if at any point things do not feel comfortable, then you’ll stop and talk about the experience. Most EMDR therapy sessions happen over the course of several sessions, and things begin to resolve incrementally, until you’ll find that these triggering memories become just…memories that bring no big waves of emotions or sensations.

Once your feelings are resolved around old memories, you’ll begin to notice positive association with the events, how you are a survivor and, in fact you’ll also begin to thrive! After a certain amount of progress, your therapist will do a reevaluation and to confirm you no longer feel intense emotion associated with that memory. If there are still lingering feelings, you’ll just repeat the EMDR process.

When your therapist and you decide that your feelings have been fully completed around the memory, then you will learn more grounding and self-calming techniques to help you in your day to day life. This learning process will help to empower you, should you get any sort of flare up of intense feeling in the future.

If at any point you feel that you need a re-evaluation and more support, your therapist will be there for you, to help you through and get you feeling good again!