NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BINAH MAGAZINE'S BI-WEEKLY COLUMN "THERAPY: A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE" 

It sounds so voodoo, so New Age, so really, really weird.

But hey, everyone is doing it now and any therapist who works with trauma has gotta know this stuff, and anyway I could always use the CE's (continuing education credits needed for periodic re-certification for social workers), so I figured, “Why not?”

So I did it.

“Did what?” you want to know.

Did a two week training to learn EMDR.

Okay, okay. I see you rolling your eyes. A bunch of new letters these mental health professionals came up with.

Hey, EMDR is much easier to say (and spell) than Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (not that it makes any more sense when you spell it out).

But let me tell you, this training blew my mind. I think it was the very first time that I attended a training that not only did I find fascinating (because I have found psychodrama also fascinating), but also immediately relevant and applicable.

EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro almost accidentally when she walking in the park and noticed that when she had disturbing thoughts, her eye movements in conjunction with those thoughts caused the disturbing thoughts to lose their charge, to lose their intensity. And they no longer bothered her.

So she went ahead and created this whole therapy based on this interplay of disturbing thoughts and eye movements and helped thousands of people overcome traumas, phobias, and whatnot.

It sounds ridiculous, I know. It sounds too ludicrously easy to work, I know.

But it does.

EMDR has been researched extensively, and the research has consistently shown its efficacy. When research studies are carried out, they must be designed in such a way that they are replicable; and the results are replicable. EMDR studies have passed with flying colors.

At Hurrican Katrina, first—responders were using EMDR on survivors. In my professional peer group of elite practitioners from all over the country who work primarily with severe trauma, after initials like PsyD, LMH, LCSW, and MD, inevitably EMDR followed.

It is not a passing phase; it is here to stay and I am so glad I learned it.

Lots of people have heard of the initials, but much less know what they stand for, or what EMDR is. Here goes:

EMDR is therapy that although it has many of the components of standard therapy like obtaining a client history and stabilizing a client in crisis, it is based on how trauma organizes itself in the brain and impacts a person's functioning. According to EMDR, when a trauma happens, the incident remains frozen in the brain. In the same way that something frozen can stay in that same state indefinitely, so too can that traumatic memory stay frozen together with all the all the sights, smells, feelings, and thoughts that accompanied the original traumatic incident. And here's the problem. After that trauma, anytime something touches upon that frozen memory, it activates the same feelings, thoughts, and even smells or visions that was frozen along with the memory even if those feelings don't make sense in the new context.

So what, you want to know? Who cares?

If it happens to you, you care, and here's why.

Say you were six years old when were in the Purim play in first grade and once onstage, you started crying from stage fright.

It may be a funny story retold years later, but if that incident was traumatic for you, the image of being onstage, the smells of the glue and glitter, and the feeling of being in the bright light may have been stored in your brain and frozen. And now, Elmer's glue makes you nauseous. You sweat each time you need to make a phone call to your daughter's teacher. Or, taking pictures by your son's bar-mitzvah makes you squirm in the bright lights, rendering you physically uncomfortable, and sometimes even sweating with nervousness you cannot place or name.

An EMDR therapist, after the standard history taking and assessment phase, will ask which problem brings the client to therapy, and will then access the client's memories that cluster around that presenting problem. A presenting problem can be fear of starting a job, going on a date, or a troubled relationship with a friend, spouse, or child.

For the client who started crying from stage fright, memories may include other plays in elementary school, eighth grade graduation, a tenth grade speech, refusing to recite the Ma Nishtana at the Pesach seder, and her first b'show that went disastrously.

The therapist would help the client access the negative beliefs she holds of herself when thinking of the memory. A negative belief frozen in time when she cried at the Purim play may be something like: I am a disappointment or I am inadequate or I am a failure. This negative belief, which began by a Purim play, plays a role in why she can't take pictures at her son's bar-mitvah, why she cannot engage on a date, or has an impaired relationship with her own daughter who may or may not be a star performer in her Purim plays...

EMDR would target the earliest or worst memory, and then begin the process called desensitization. And here's the voodoo part that seems really, really strange.

Sitting across from the client, the therapist will use her fingers in a sweeping motion back and forth in front of the client's eyes, and ask the client to bring up the image associated with the negative memory, think of his negative belief associated with the chosen memory, and advise him to be aware of any associated physical sensations noted in his body. The bilateral stimulation of the eyes in conjunction with the thoughts serves to unfreeze the memory and work through it so that the memory remains but without the associated disturbances, without the associated negative beliefs or triggers.

I know, I know. It sounds soooo weird.

Some therapists, instead of eye movement, would offer bilateral stimulation with tappers, in which a person feels bilateral movements in her left and right hands alternatively. Others use light, or sounds. But the premise remains the same.

Not all clients are good candidates for EMDR.

Some contraindications is a client who is unable to self-soothe. Or cannot verbalize (there is EMDR for children that works slightly differently).

I will tell you a secret. I tried EMDR. At the workshop. We had to practice on each other. And when a colleague practiced on me, I was supposed to think of a memory to use. So, I'm not crazy, you know. I am not doing therapy with this person I barely know, using some strange method she just learned two hours earlier. So I choose a real simple memory. No charge to it. Couldn't care less about this memory to begin with. Bah! No sweat letting her do her mumbo jumbo fingers stuff on me.

But the joke was on me. And the joke was on my colleague who changed places giving me a turn to be her EMDR therapist and choosing a memory she thought was benign.

It blew us both away.

I cleared a memory, a negative belief, and some associated painful feelings while allowing her to do the EMDR on me. And the same happened to her.

So that's it.

I'm sold on it.

EMDR anybody? It's great stuff...

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