Preparing for an EMDR intensive.
Setting yourself up for success
EMDR intensives are focused, long format therapy sessions that allow for more therapeutic momentum and continuity — which can lead to greater insight, quicker symptom relief, and can reduce overall treatment hours. Because this is deep, focused, and often taxing work, preparation and aftercare are fundamental parts of the treatment.
Getting A Basic Understanding
Having appropriate expectations and a general understanding of the process of EMDR can help bring a sense of ease to the experience and help the initial intensive feel more impactful. EMDR is unlike traditional talk therapy and can feel a little strange in the beginning. It’s often easier to ‘trust the process’ when we understand the purpose behind the protocol. See the next section for more information about the process.
Emotional & Physical Readiness
Using self-care practices that support mental, emotional, and nervous system wellness can lead to a greater sense of overall readiness and actually be supportive of the underlying mechanisms of change that are being leveraged in EMDR. This is an embodied modality and supportive practice like journaling, meditation, movement, and rest, prepare and support the nervous system for the work.
Creating A Safe Container
Intensives can be particularly taxing. Plan for post-treatment rest and support. This includes minimizing stressors and obligations, eating nourishing foods and staying well hydrated, and planning for restorative activities and time. The self-care practices that are used in preparation can be also be helpful as after-care.
Understanding the Phases
EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a protocoled modality. This means that there are specific steps that we will follow and phases involved in work.
The first phases involve getting clear on goals, gathering important information, setting expectations for the process, and beginning to identify and map out the memory, or “target”, being addressed. In this preparatory phase, we will also check in with resources and use practices and techniques to support overall stabilization. Much of this early phase will be completed in the intake session and is designed to organize the work for greater impact and ready the client’s nervous system for stepping into the work.
The Reprocessing phase involves the active use of Bilateral Stimulation (BLS) while being in contact with the targeted memory. BLS works by engaging both sides of the brain and by taxing the working memory. This process helps facilitate desensitization to the target memory and to bring down the emotional and physiological activation that accompanies the memory. In the Reprocessing phase we will also work on strengthening positive beliefs associated with the memory and check for lingering somatic symptoms.
Sessions are ended with a goal of returning to a state of calm, containing lingering or unfinished work, and creating a plan for follow up self-care or additional treatment sessions.
In EMDR we are setting up the conditions for our brains to reorganize what becomes “stuck” through the chaos of traumatic experiences. This can be powerfully effective at reducing difficult symptoms and addressing PTSD, Anxiety, Chronic Pain, Prolonged Grief, and other painful psychological and emotional effects of trauma.