Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - EMDR
(Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
Most people want to receive therapy support for their current problems. They come to therapy not because my family didn't care about me when I was a child, but because I have this problem today. Although the majority of those who seek therapy have negative early childhood experiences, it is generally thought that the past is behind us and has no impact on the present. When the therapist tries to focus on the past, the answer is often similar. “But that was years ago” or “I want to talk about the present, not the past.” The past does not disappear and may even consist of the past repeated today. Unfortunately, in order to deal with past pain, locking the past in an internal room, putting padlocks on it, posting guards in front of it to prevent it from coming out, and trying not to look at that door again is unfortunately not a solution. The more negative the past, the more memories chase us. The wounds caused by neglect, abuse, worthlessness, and lack of love do not heal by covering them up, they only fester.
When a trauma occurs, the person records this memory with the emotional capacity of that day. Our emotional capacity decreases the younger we are. For this reason, traumas in childhood leave their mark on people the most. The experience stored in memory is recorded in an unprocessed way, with the emotions and body sensations of the time period when the event occurred. Since these memories are not processed and digested like other memories, negative emotions and thoughts continue to arise when a situation triggers that memory. Here it is necessary to emphasize the importance of genetic structure. The way our brain functions due to a genetic load can make us more or less susceptible to the effects of different events. For this reason, one person who experiences the same trauma may develop post-traumatic stress disorder while another may not.
It should be noted that although childhood is of great importance, it is also wrong to see childhood memories as the source of everything. Research shows that old events can make a person vulnerable to later events. Sometimes, even if there were no negative experiences in childhood, Traumatic experiences such as war experienced at an adult age can disrupt a person's life balance and cause him to develop psychopathology.
Traumas do not always have to be major life events (accidents, wars, rape, etc.). While the diagnostic criteria for a trauma are expected to be experiences that threaten the person's life, we know that neglect, parents not being there when the child needs it, humiliation, blame, giving the child more burden than he can bear, separations, migration, bankruptcy in later ages, divorce, and deception. Experiences can also be experienced as life events that block people's lives.
According to the EMDR philosophy, the root of psychopathology is trauma that remains unprocessed, and no matter what age it occurs, if the person has not been able to process the negative life experience he has experienced, it remains unfinished. remains an issue. Unfinished issues constantly knock on our door, even if we don't want them to. The more we run away from them, the more they get in our way. EMDR helps us revisit these experiences through imagination rather than running away from them to finish unfinished issues. Imagination gives us a unique space in psychotherapy. Because in this way the past can be brought to the present. Imagination has no limits. Any experience, imagination, past or even future can fit into this area. Our brain activates the same region both when we actually experience that situation and when we imagine that situation. With the EMDR approach, which combines methods such as imagination, free flow and bilateral stimulation, disturbing memories from the past are visited safely in a therapy environment. EMDR helps process traumas through journeys to the past and helps eliminate the symptoms experienced today due to this trauma.
Traumas are experiences as old as human history, which occupy and manage life when not resolved, and grow and develop when resolved. The past does not stay in the past, it is always with us, but the good news is that the past can be rewritten.
Which disorders can EMDR be used to treat?
EMDR is now used to treat the causes of disturbing life experiences such as accidents, war stress, harassment, natural disasters or sad events experienced in childhood. In addition to emotional problems, it is used in the treatment of phobia, performance anxiety, panic disorder, body image disorder, trauma symptoms in children, grief, chronic pain and different psychosomatic problems.
At the end of EMDR therapy What happens?
EMDR helps the client adapt to life better, develop positive coping methods, develop more positive coping methods about himself and the outside world, and establish healthier social relationships. provides. As a result of therapy, it causes behavioral changes. Most of the clients who started with intense distress state that their distress began to decrease after the first session, the images that disturbed them began to disappear, their body sensations relaxed, and their negative emotions began to decrease. The distressing situation no longer bothers you as much as it used to. The meaning of the traumatic experience begins to change for the person.
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