EMDR

What is EMDR?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. This type of therapy is meant for people who continuously suffer from the consequences of a traumatic experience (post traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD). At Grip Psychologen all therapists are (or will be) trained as EMDR therapists. 

In addition to PTSD, EMDR has also proven to be effective with symptoms such as fear of failure, panic or low self-esteem. 

Once in treatment, your therapist will ask you to think back to the traumatic event, including the corresponding images, feelings and thoughts. In the first place to gather information about the traumatic experience, secondly the processing procedure will be activated. Your therapist will again ask you to remember the traumatic event, now in combination with a distracting stimulus, which is usually their hand.

You will be asked to focus on the hand of the therapist, while they move their hand from right to left in front of you, at about 30 centimeters distance from your face. These so called 'sets' are a series of eye movements that will continue for about 30 seconds. After each set is a moment of rest in which you are asked what came to mind. The EMDR procedure usually triggers a stream of thoughts and images, or even emotions and physical reactions. Usually, something about either one of the aforementioned things will change. After each set of eye movement, you will be asked to focus on the most notable change. A new set of eye movements then follows. 

In some cases we will use audio that is offered alternately on the right and left through headphones. The rest of the procedure is the same. 

For more information or for an appointment, please feel free to contact us. We will gladly explain what we can do for you.