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The origin of EMDR was the observation of the apparent desensitising effect of spontaneous repeated eye movements on unpleasant thoughts. The founder of EMDR is Francine Shapiro.
One of the basic premises of EMDR is that most psychopathologies are based on early life experiences. When a traumatic incident occurs it can cause actual neural pathology. This pathology may be said to “freeze” the information in its original anxiety-producing form, complete with the original image, negative self-assessment and emotions.
The goal of EMDR treatment is to rapidly metabolise the dysfunctional residue from the past and transform it into something useful. Essentially, with EMDR the dysfunctional information undergoes a spontaneous change in form and meaning, incorporating insights and effects that are enhancing rather than self-denigrating to the client, because it seems to unblock the information processing system and memory networks.
EMDR can be used to treat past and present trauma, phobias, low self-esteem, stress and excessive grief.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing with Children
Child trauma is increasingly recognized as both widespread and detrimental to psychosocial development and quality of life. Children exposed to extreme distress, such as occurs in natural disaster or violent incidents, will probably be traumatized, and often have difficulty recovering unless special assistance is provided. It is best to treat traumatized children early, while symptoms are most apparent and have not yet become embedded in the personality.
EMDR is a trauma therapy method, which features having the child focus on the most distressing segment of a disturbing memory while moving the eyes rapidly from side to side. EMDR is used to access, neutralize and bring to adaptive resolution the upsetting memories.
Example: A child who was in the car when a family got hijacked might present with symptoms of distress, such as change in sleeping patterns, becoming clingy, tearful, separation anxiety and many more. In a typical EMDR session, the most distressing memory (like when the hijacker pointed a gun at Daddy) will be used to access, neutralize and bring adaptive resolution by using puppets, toys and eye movements.
Targets to be used in an EMDR session can be memories of traumatic events, images of a feared person, bad dreams, physical symptoms or sensations, specific anxieties or fears. Some very young and fearful children are more comfortable with their parent present, or at least very accessible nearby. In some cases, the parent will be invited into the session with the child sitting on the parent's lap while the therapist conducts the EMDR session.
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