How does EMDR work? I’ll try to explain the complex in simple words, watch your hands. Traumatic situations and negative memories tend to get stuck in our neural networks. The most common example is nightmares or intrusive thoughts after a traumatic event. “Blockedness” is indicated by the fact that a person returns again and again to a memory or to his problem and seems to be walking in a vicious circle. But constantly thinking about the problem only makes it worse. Thoughts about the problem can be accompanied by sudden images, sensations, sounds and even smells. Negative self-beliefs associated with trauma emerge. For example, “nobody needs me,” “I’m a loser,” “nobody will love me,” “I’ll never lose weight,” etc. And often with the help of conversational psychotherapy alone, “I can’t hack this bug,” or it is assumed that that to solve the problem you will need to go to a psychologist for a couple of years! EMDR is a short-term method of psychotherapy, so the processing of trauma lasts on average from 3 to 10 sessions. During an EMDR session, a traumatic event is identified that led to problems troubling the client. Then, using the method, the adaptive information-processing system of the brain is launched. To do this, during the session the client reproduces eye movements that are characteristic of the REM sleep phase. These movements are aimed at processing the events that happened to a person during the day. If you reproduce them when working with trauma, then it is also processed. After an EMDR session, the perception of the traumatic event and attitude towards it changes. Negative beliefs that arose due to trauma are processed. And, most importantly, the echoes of the traumatic event cease to bother the client. It is important to note that EMDR helps process trauma, but does not teach a person more adaptive behavior patterns. For this reason, the best results are achieved when combining EMDR and therapy in one approach or another. Do you have problems that you return to again and again? What is stopping you from dealing with them once and for all? Colleagues, do you use EMDR in your practice??