EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
Welcome readers of Counselor's blog Alternative Universe. I made this page for those of you wanting to know about this therapy I'm going through, EMDR.
EMDR is a therapeutic treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. In my case, I spent 5 years in a church that ended up being more like a cult. While I had a hard time in high school as well, I think my experiences in that church made my behavior a lot worse and led to me having Borderline Personality Disorder. This is just a personal opinion, though. After I left the church, they harassed me for over a year at my workplaces - Wal-Mart and Best Buy. After I had quit both jobs due to the harassment, I attempted suicide in May 2003 and again in June. More info on my experiences with that will be up soon, when my website gets finished.
My regular therapist, Susan, is not trained in EMDR, so I am seeing another therapist named Tom temporarily. The process is estimated to take 8-10 weeks. EMDR works on the premise that the eye movements you make when you dream are accessing your subconscious, and so they use the eye movements in therapy. It is a fairly new therapy - invented in 1987 by Francine Shapiro - and somewhat controversial. I've read her book - it's available on Amazon.com if you're interested. It's called "EMDR: The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma."
For more information, see the Wikipedia entry on EMDR, or the EMDR Institute's website. You're all welcome to e-mail me with questions or comments.
You can read about each of my sessions at the following links - at the bottom of each page there is also a "Next" link to go on to the next session.
Evaluation appt & Session 1 - 10/28/2005 & 11/11/2005