EMDR1 refers to the desensitization and reprocessing of information through eye movements. In his practice in Tamarin, occupational psychologist and EMDR psychotherapist César Tierz explains how traumatic experiences are uncovered and healed.
With a simple, pictorial definition, César untangles the complex process of this short therapy (an average of ten sessions), which our eyes reproduce by moving during the dream phase. Let’s visualize the great library of our memory which, during sleep, fills up with books illustrating our memories of the day, then sorted and filed on the shelves. For some people, this natural and spontaneous process can fail, putting a badly processed shock in the wrong place in the memory. This is known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and leads to a host of disabling symptoms: chronic pain, anxiety disorders, depression, addictions and other phobias.
Whether visual, tactile or sonic, alternating bilateral stimulation desensitizes the pain and plays on the intensity of the emotion… until it disappears. In this way, the therapist helps to place the traumatic memory in the right place, so that it will continue to exist but will no longer be painful, since nothing else will dislodge it. Because the technique revives strong emotions that are sometimes difficult to stabilize, César naturally stresses the importance of kindness and trust in the practitioner. The practitioner relies on the patient’s internal capacities, strengths and resources to define the objective to be reached and the tools to be used in support, in order to associate each negative experience with a constructive and soothing thought.
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1 Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing
