EMDR Therapy

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It involves following the therapist's fingers (or lights) moving back and forth with your eyes. It sounds like hypnotism, but the patient is not getting sleepy -- they're focusing on traumatic memories. There's more to it, but I won't go into the details. Although EMDR sounds weird, it has surprisingly been found to be one of the most successful treatments for PTSD.

No one understands exactly how it works, but the eye movement mimics REM sleep, which helps integrate experiences in long-term memory so that the patient is not constantly reliving the past. Something about the bilateral stimulation helps to connect the left and right brain.

I tried to focus on memories while tracking with my eyes but I'm a terrible multitasker, so Z tapped on my knees instead, alternating left and right. It still provided bilateral stimulation of the brain, but it worked a lot better for me since I could just close my eyes and focus on one thing. EMDR is a very strange activity, though, and it felt a bit silly since I could never tell if it was doing anything in the moment.

We did EMDR almost every week for several weeks, during which time my symptoms seemed to be worse, if anything. But sometime after the last session, I was suddenly doing a lot better. Some people experience immediate relief even after one session, but everyone is different. Z says the EMDR therapy could have helped to "loosen" things up, and maybe that's why it took awhile to experience the effects of it.