When a trauma keeps resurfacing during the therapy sessions and obstructs the emotional development, I sometimes use the EMDR method. Usually, we can continue the haptotherapy after only one or two sessions.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is a short and powerful therapy for processing unpleasant or traumatic experiences. Trauma processing with EMDR takes place by the stimulation of the brain through eye movements or rhythmic sounds.
EMDR can help people who have experienced difficult, shocking or traumatic experiences and are still struggling with the consequences. This may involve one-off experiences such as an accident, rape, violent crime, medical intervention or loss, but also long-term exposure to, for example, bullying, abuse, violence or war.
During an EMDR session, the client, under the guidance of the therapist, focusses on unprocessed or disturbing experiences. At the same time he/she follows the therapist’s hand movements with his/her eyes or listens to rhythmic clicks via headphones. This stimulates the brain to process the experience in a way that is similar to what happens during REM sleep, only now in full waking awareness. During the EMDR, everything related to the unpleasant experience is processed without discussion of the event in much detail. This gives the experience a place and the negative consequences of it disappear.