How does it work?

EMDR is a comprehensive system of therapy that follows procedure and guidelines, while also being flexible enough to adapt to your unique treatment needs.

The therapy has eight phases:

• Phase 1: History & Treatment Planning
  We will do a clinical interview to discuss your history and develop your treatment plan. From there we will complete some additional assessments to help us understand what is going on and how you got there.

• Phase 2: Preparation
  I will explain the EMDR therapy process to you, address questions and concerns you may have. We will then start to develop and practice techniques you can use to manage emotional distress that may come up in session and the day to day distress that may arise between sessions.

• Phase 3: Assessment
  At this phase we will discuss which area you would like to start with. We can start with a present distressing situation or a past event that happened some time ago. From there we will use techniques to map out the memory network and identify other related memories and experiences for reprocessing based on the issue you chose to start with. The last thing we will do is select the first individual target memory and identify the image, beliefs, emotions, and body sensations related to the event. We will then identify a positive belief that you would like to work towards to replace the identified negative belief.

The next three phases are “reprocessing phases” and are the main body of the work.

• Phase 4: Desensitization
  We will begin bilateral stimulation with taps or eye movements while you think about the selected memory. The goal is to help your mind bring awareness to all aspects of and related to the experience in a safe and controlled way, which completely reduces the distress related to the memory.

• Phase 5: Installation
  Here we will strengthen a positive belief that you choose to be associated with the target memory until it feels completely true. This helps to shift the negative meaning originally learned from the event and transforms it to a new one from a place of wisdom and understanding.

• Phase 6: Body Scan
  You will be asked to hold in mind your target memory and new positive belief, while scanning your body from head to toe. We will then reprocess any lingering distressing body sensations until they resolve. This step helps to make sure that we have done a thorough job reprocessing.

The final two phases of EMDR are revolving.

• Phase 7: Closure
  Each session of EMDR therapy ends with the closure phase. We will use the skills learned earlier to bring you back to baseline and help you feel as you had when you came in or even better. A memory is completed when there is no present distress when thinking about it, we have a positive belief associated with it that feels completely true, and your body is free from disturbing sensations related to the memory.

• Phase 8: Reevaluation
  Each session begins with reevaluation. We will reevaluate recently completed memories to ensure that the distress remains neutral and the positive belief remains true. We will reassess in-progress targets to see what might of changed between sessions.

The therapy is comprehensive in that it has a past, present, and future focus. After we have completed all past memories related to the original target experience we will work to resolve present triggers related to the event. We will then complete future templates, which are installed visualized experiences for how you would like to better handle a similar, challenging situation in the future. This gives the mind a template for action should the moment arise. EMDR is a comprehensive system of therapy that follows procedure and guidelines, while also being flexible enough to adapt to your unique treatment needs.