How Does EMDR Work for Anxiety?
About 1 in 8 of the people in the world are dealing with a mental illness. The most common of all these conditions is an anxiety disorder. It’s not that anxiety is a bad thing. Without it, none of us would be here. Anxiety is a normal emotion that is designed to alert us to potential dangers and threats. However, the same mechanisms that protect us can be corrupted by a wide range of mostly external causes.
All of this would help to explain why so many folks are stuck in a never-ending stress response and are very much in need of help. One of the options available for this is eye movement desensitization and deprocessing (EMDR) therapy.
What is EMDR?
It’s probably not what you expect. Here’s a very brief rundown of what EMDR is and can do:
You and your therapist work together to select a specific anxiety trigger.
Once you’re completely focused on this memory or belief, the EMDR therapist performs finger and hand movements that you follow with your eyes while keeping your head still.
You enter a state similar to that of rapid eye movement (REM) in which you can confront the anxiety trigger without feeling distressed.
The negative belief is resolved, allowing you to instill a positive trigger in its place instead.
How Does This Unusual Approach Change Your Brain?
If you’ve been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, there’s an excellent chance that your brain has already undergone some changes. The parts of your brain that are designed to encourage rational thinking and prudent decision-making are being overwhelmed by the areas that control emotions. When your default setting prioritizes emotions over reason, you can wind up trapped in a state of high alert. It becomes virtually impossible to decipher real dangers from imagined concerns.
When EMDR enters the picture, you enhance your natural ability to store memories healthily. In the REM-like state mentioned above, you can override the dysfunction and ease your brain back into typical functioning. To put it simply, EMDR will restore balance in the brain by calming down the areas that are meant to manage your emotional responses.
How Does EMDR Work for Anxiety?
Anxiety disorders set off cycles of distorted thinking. You may begin to believe you’ve lost control of your life and cannot create positive change. Anxiety is a skilled liar and can make you forget that you’re capable and resourceful. Most importantly, you need help remembering that even when things don’t go well, you can make the best of it.
An experienced EMDR therapist can guide you on a healing journey in as few as eight sessions. When confronting counterproductive patterns and cycles, you are ideally positioned to take back control of your perceptions and behaviors. Root causes are revealed. New approaches are discovered. Anxiety is no longer a ball and chain as it returns to its original purpose.
EMDR has a stellar track record and virtually no side effects. Thus, exploring this path to recovery makes a lot of sense.
How to Get Started with EMDR
This isn’t a case of declaring one treatment option as “better” than another. But meeting with a practitioner who is skilled in EMDR is a giant first step to learning more about how your brain works and what you’re enduring. Anxiety disorders can seriously hamper your life and cause symptoms that are not easy to identify. There’s no reason to suffer in silence.
If anxiety is the world’s top cause of mental distress, there’s no shame in asking for help. EMDR or anxiety therapy just might be the ideal path for you.