EMDR : A breakthrough in psychological therapies

EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – is a new highly effective, fast-acting psychological treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other emotional disorders. Involving no pills, no instruments, and causing no side-effects. EMDR is a specialised form of “talking therapy” administered by a trained therapist.  In most cases symptoms reduce dramatically after first few sessions.

During EMDR, the therapist asks you about the traumatic experience and how you are coping, and then takes you through a procedure where you focus on the traumatic experience while you are asked to pay attention to something that the therapist moves from side to side in front of your eyes.  EMDR is said to mirror the body’s natural information processing systems, for instance as in sleep, where rapid eye movement (REM) is said to help process daily memories and experiences.

When you experience acute trauma or distress, your natural information processing systems can’t cope.  It’s as though the emotions and thoughts are too painful to be processed.  So they keep coming back, in a “raw” and unresolved state.  EMDR helps you to reprocess these events and replace the negative thoughts, feelings and sensations with positive ones.

EMDR is being heralded as a highly effective, safe alternative to drugs and long term counselling and has been recommended as the treatment of choice in several Europeans countries for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

EMDR is an effective treatment for many distressing emotional disturbances, including depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, obsessive thinking, sexual and physical abuse trauma, bullying trauma, addictions, excessive or unresolved grief, and performance anxiety.

Yasmina Lallemand, is a Clinical Psychologist/Psychotherapist also trained and qualified as an EMDR therapist based in Montreal. Member of EMDRIA, she is an EMDR Certified Therapist.

She says “I am getting an increasing number of referrals from GP’s, employers, medico-legal professionals and patients for whom drugs, and long term counselling has not had the effect they desired.  They are astonished at how quickly their anxiety reduces, and how their sleep quality and life in general improves after only a few sessions of EMDR treatment. Some of them become quite angry at the time and money that has been wasted on the drugs and the ineffective trauma counselling they have received, sometimes for years, with little effect”

To find out more about EMDR….. contact Yasmina Lallemand.