Joyce Dallimore became a fully qualified and accredited member of the EMDR UK and Ireland Association for EMDR in 2014 after 4 years of study and training.
Overview about EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), was created by Dr Francine Shapiro, a Psychologist and Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, USA. It is approved by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence Guidelines (NICE) for Post- traumatic Stress Disorder and all forms of trauma related issues. It is an innovative clinical treatment, which has successfully helped over one million people who have experienced psychological difficulties, which originate from some kind of traumatic experience, such as sexual abuse, childhood neglect, road traffic accidents and violence. EMDR is also successful in treating other complaints such as performance anxiety, self-esteem issues, phobias and other trauma related anxiety disorders.
EMDR is a complex method of psychotherapy which integrates many of the successful elements of a range of therapeutic approaches and combines them with eye movements or other forms of bilateral stimulation in ways which stimulate the brain's information processing system.
Normally, the individual processes traumatic experiences naturally during REM state dream sleep. However, when a person is severely traumatised, either by an overwhelming event or by being repeatedly subjected to distress, this healing process may become overloaded, leaving the original disturbing experiences unprocessed. These unprocessed memories can be stored in the brain in a “raw” form where they can be continually re-evoked when confronted with events that are in any way similar to the original experience.
EMDR utilises the body's natural healing ability and allows the brain to heal psychological problems at the same rate as the rest of the body heals physical ailments. Because EMDR allows the mind and body to heal at the same rate, treatment can be rapid. The number of sessions required for EMDR treatment, however will vary according to the complexity of the issues being dealt with. In general, the more isolated the traumatic memory being treated, the shorter the treatment tends to be.
There have been 14 controlled studies supporting the efficiency of EMDR, making it the most thoroughly researched method in the treatment of trauma. The most recent five studies with people suffering from a range of events such as rape, combat stress, bereavement, accidents, natural disasters etc. have found that 84 – 90% of the participants no longer had Post-traumatic Stress Disorder following EMDR treatment. Given the wide application, EMDR promises to be the therapy of the future.
