EMDR is a groundbreaking form of therapy

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) was created by psychologist Francine Shapiro in the 1980’s and used successfully to treat post traumatic stress. Since then this empirically based technique has developed into one of the foremost treatments for trauma worldwide. With contributions from professionals across the globe EMDR has evolved into a method of treatment with numerous applications extending to specific psychiatric disorders, substance abuse, pain control, limiting belief systems and emotional problems as well. No one knows exactly how it works, but what we do know is that traumatic events can get locked in the brain with the accompanying feelings, sensations, thoughts and beliefs related to the stressful incident. When the memory or associated reminders are triggered, a person can re-experience a traumatic response either consciously or unconsciously. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (left brain – right brain) like rapid eye movement which is a natural process to activate the brain to work through the traumatic event, thereby reducing it to a story with little to no emotional or physical pain associated with the memory. Here are examples of EMDR used with children in my practice: Cameron (6) developed a phobia to entering lifts, stairwells and for being behind any form of closed door; bathrooms, classroom, elevators, theatres, sliding doors to shops and many others. Cameron would go into an absolute state of panic and refuse to go in. This obviously caused a major amount of stress and concern for all of those around Cameron – especially her immediate family. Mano used a combination of play therapy and EMDR (which she taught us to do) over 8 sessions. Cameron is now totally free of her phobias and has been so for the past 9 months. In fact she has not even mentioned it for at least 7 months. Once she overcame her initial challenge (entering a glass door elevator) she rapidly progressed to overcoming her others. She also uses the “think of a nice place / happy times” technique to overcome any nervousness / fear – such as flying in an aeroplane. The EMDR treatment has also been very successfully applied by us to our 18 month old son who developed a fear of the bath and would not go near it. 2 sessions in the bath with his mother and EMDR and he was cured. It’s now a challenge to get him out of the bath! Nikola (34). Josh (14) would not sleep out for 2 years. He had an incident 2 years prior where he and his father were washed away in the sea, and rescued by lifeguards. I always felt that this was the root of his problem, but many psychology sessions with a different psychologist did not support this. I felt that he had buried the trauma very deeply, as is the case with severe shock. Josh had an introduction session with Mano, then a briefing session about hypnotherapy and EMDR. He had one hypnotherapy session (which took Mano straight to the sea incident) to identify the trauma, and then two EMDR sessions to deal with the incident. After the hypnosis and one EMDR session he volunteered to sleep out, and did so with no difficulty. Since then he has regular plans to sleep out. Pam (41). (Permission has been given by parents to publish this information)