EMDR ...


EMDR ...

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing


EMDR is an increasingly recognized technique. After a complete assessment, the therapist leads the patient to verbalize a negative thought related to the traumatic situation and to find a positive outcome. We identify the emotion in question and the level of distress, then, the patient imagines "the worst image" related to the trauma and is invited at the same time to make lateral movements with the eyes (following the fingers of the therapist, for example ) until the distress associated with this image decreases. Eye movement would help integrate information into memory.



Desensitization and Reprocessing by Eye Movement

It was by chance, during a walk in May 1987, that the American psychologist Francine Shapiro discovered that her "obsessive negative thoughts" disappeared when she quickly moved her eyes back and forth from left to right. He did not need more to offer the exercise to his colleagues, to experiment it with his patients and to create EMDR, with brilliant results - especially for the states of post-traumatic stress (PTSD) suffered by the victims. conflicts, attacks, sexual violence or natural disasters.



After becoming a researcher at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, in 2002 Dr. Shapiro received the Sigmund Freud Prize, the world's highest distinction in psychotherapy. Meanwhile, sixty thousand practitioners had been trained in EMDR in more than eighty countries, a humanitarian association was born to intervene after major disasters.

PTSD studies by the US veterans administration have confirmed the effectiveness of EMDR.

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of people treated in the United States, each direct or indirect victim of a disaster, attack, plane crash, etc., with the possibility of being treated quickly by EMDR.

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