EMDR and Brainspotting (a trauma treatment very similar to EMDR) are therapeutic techniques designed specifically to alleviate the distressing aftereffects of trauma. The causes of trauma can be obvious: childhood abuse, combat, the loss of a loved one, natural or manmade disasters, accidents. The causes of other more "everyday" traumas are often minimized but can be equally debilitating, such as: job loss, failure, humiliation. Whatever the cause, there is often an aftermath to trauma that causes a puzzling array of mental, emotional and physical symptoms. In it's most extreme form this is known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
Oftentimes, when something traumatic occurs, it seems to get "locked" into our nervous system with the original visual images, sounds, smells, thoughts and feelings of the experience. Since this experience is locked in it continues to be "triggered" whenever a reminder event happens. This trigger leads to increased feelings of discomfort and distress and these get overlaid on the original event. Over time this can really build up into a big mess. One of the major downsides of all this is that over time we become less and less able to live in current time. It's as if most of our identity is defined by happened to us in the past -- not by who we are in the present.
The techniques used in EMDR and Brainspotting seem to unlock the original traumatic event from the nervous system, and all the subsequent triggering events as well. We refer to this unlocking as "processing." Once traumatic material is more fully processed, we are less likely to be retriggered, and we are more likely to live in current time. When we are living in current time, we are more effective, we make better decisions and our life smooths out and stabilizes -- we feel so much better -- physically as well as emotionally.
These trauma treatments are endorsed by the American Psychological Association because of their effectiveness and because they are least likely to cause any additional distress to those suffering from trauma.
