Ep 71 - EMDR FAQs
 Hello, and welcome back to the EMDR Doctor podcast. I'm Dr Caroline Lloyd,
and today I’m going to talk about some FAQs.
Is EMDR hypnosis?
No! It is very different to hypnosis and I have done a whole podcast episode on this, so if you want a detailed answer then please go to ep 14, but basically, with EMDR you are awake and alert and completely in control of your own faculties, you are driving the process just with my guidance, whereas with hypnosis, the therapist is in control and making suggestions, and there is an altered state of consciousness. Hypnosis is great for lots of things, but in my experience (and I have trained in hypnosis as well and used it for a few years) EMDR is a much better modality for trauma. Hypnosis is really great for relaxation and I do still use it from time to time for this purpose.
Do the eye movements actually matter?
Yes! The structure and set up for EMDR is one part of the therapy, an important part is the bilateral stimulation, which can be auditory, visual with eye movements, tactile with buzzies or tapping. There is evidence to show that eye movements work best, which is why we do try and encourage the use of eye movements, but sometimes this isn’t possible, like with eye injuries, maybe epilepsy, concussion, migraines, so we can use the other modalities of bilateral with good effect.
How quickly does EMDR work?
Straight away! By the end of the session, there will be change in the target memory we have worked on. The downstream results as in behaviour change, may also be instant, or they may take more time to become evident, depending on the layers of trauma - for trauma that has been repeated many times, or in many different ways, then we may need more sessions to see change, but it is certainly happening right from the word go.
Can EMDR cure PTSD?
I’m going to answer this question in another way - firstly yes, it can, and I see this often, and there is lots of academic evidence to support this. It can also help anxiety, depression, personality disorders, insomnia, nightmares, panic attacks, low self esteem, perfectionism, childhood trauma, traumatic grief, eating disorders, substance abuse and lots of other things in between.
But it can be hard, and is not for everyone.
Can EMDR bring up memories I've forgotten?
This is a great and multilayered question. In short - yes it can. But it doesn’t always. Let me get in to a bit more detail. Sometimes we find that bad memory from childhood can kind of obscure a lot of other memories. So for example, if there was bullying in say grade 4 of primary school then someone may not remember a lot from the years prior to that if we then do EMDR on those memories from grade 4 and they resolve and they diminish and they become more transparent so to speak then we may find that there are good memories available from that period of time as a result of working on those difficult memories so people may get to the end of a session working on some bullying in grade 4 and they'll say yeah you know I was just remembering at the beginning of grade 4. I won the cross country or I was just remembering in grade 3. I had a really good close group of friends and we had so much fun playing hopscotch every day or whatever that may be so sometimes when we remove that kind of blockage of the bad memory then a lot of other good memories can surface and that can be a really happy t. However if someone comes to me and says I don't remember anything from my childhood before I was 11 then when we were when I was 11 we moved house so we moved to a different suburb and then I can remember perfectly clearly from then on what I might be suspecting there was that something really awful and maybe prolonged happened during those years at that previous house this pure speculation obviously but in my experience we don't tend to gain a lot of memories. If there's kind of a huge track of time that's been obliterated. Quite often as we're processing a difficult memory people will come up with a lot of detail about that memory and they'll say to me at the end you know I'm really surprised. I did not believe that I had that much memory about that event but it seems that something about MDR does allow that memory. Once we process the really big bits the bits that kind of stick out as the bad memory once we process that and it's less invasive unless overwhelming then other bits and pieces do seem to float up to the surface so I don't know the neurobiology behind this. It's a really intriguing field memory and memory loss and dissociated memories and I can't give you too much information on this. This is just my experience.
Do I have to believe EMDR will work for it to help me?
No I have had plenty of people who have come in very sceptical about EMDR or they. They either don't believe the science or they think it's a load of baloney because I'm waving this wander around in their face which is quite a reasonable kind of hesitation to have or they think it's just a fat and they come in and they say well you know my trauma is probably too bad for EMDR to work on it and I actually really love these people because you know the look of surprise on their face when we get to the end and we check in on the target memory again and it feels so much less distressing is just a wonderful thing to behold and is one of my favourite things about EMDR so no you don't need to believe that it will work in order for it to work. it's not a placebo effect.
Can EMDR Make You Feel Worse Before You Feel Better?
The unfortunate answer to this is yes. so with EMDR we actually face into those really difficult memories so we get past all of the avoidance that is often part of PTSD and part of trauma so we work our way past the avoidance and then we face right into the really difficult subject matter so that in itself takes courage and it can be really difficult to do that once we've done that and started processing memories. Often people do feel better but they can be a phase where we open up all the hurt and the awfulness of all of those memories and especially if it's been say you know really prolonged and severe childhood trauma we can't process it all in the one goes so it takes time. It might take 20 sessions and it might take 50 sessions so for some people that might be you know a year and a half of weekly EMDR therapy before they actually start overall feeling better which is really tough and you know hard to manage sometimes so but for most people they feel better quite quickly but for some people it can be really difficult and I just want to validate that because it can be really difficult to go towards those memories which are the source of the pain and distressing somebody's life so it can take perseverance. It can take courage. It can take a lot of support and understanding and tolerance of sometimes really big and awful feelings of despair and worthlessness so for some people at a particular time of their life it's not possible to do that and that's absolutely okay. There are other therapies that are more supportive or we can do a lot of resourcing with EMDR, which is more of a supportive way to do EMDR and that can be helpful so there are ways of managing it but the answer to that question is yes sadly, it can.
Can EMDR be done online?
Yes! absolutely, and we have all gotten very used to do EMDR online. I don’t personally love it, because I really enjoy the connection that comes with in person therapy, and also my neck seems to get quite sore with doing online EMDR, because I find myself trying to peer deeply in to the screen to see my client better! But some therapists work solely online, and do an amazing job, and get therapy to clients who may find in person therapy inaccessible.
If you would like me to do another series of fAQs, please feel free to send me an email to [email protected] or get in touch via my website emdrdoctor.com.au.
So I hope this has been interesting or helpful to you in some way. I will talk to you again next week. In the meantime, take good care. Bye for now.
