EMDR

The IADC method developed by Dr. Botkin begins with the use of EMDR (eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing). Anyone who wishes to use the method will have to be trained in the use of EMDR by a qualified training organization. The Center of IADC Studies and Dr. Botkin do not train in EMDR.

EMDR was first introduced by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980's. She later wrote her book, EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing: Basic Principles, Protocols and Procedures (Guilford Press, NY, 2001). She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Mental Research Institute, Palo Alto, California. She serves as Executive Director of the EMDR Institute in Pacific Grove, California, and the President Emeritus of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and pro bono trainings worldwide.

The EMDR Institute's Web site is at emdr.com.

The EMDR technique involves getting the patient to move his or her eyes in a particular rhythmic fashion while at the same time attending to a particular aspect of the traumatic memory. The therapeutic results, to those familiar with the treatment of PTSD and grief, are nothing less than astonishing. For many patients, significant desensitization of the intrusive images and feelings associated with a particular loss can occur within a single session. Similarly, EMDR also results in a rapid cognitive restructuring of the traumatic event. We are thus in many instances able to achieve in one session of EMDR what we had been unable to accomplish after years of traditional psychotherapy.

How EMDR works is still a matter of some debate. However, most psychologists familiar with the procedure would agree that it somehow greatly increases the brain's ability to process information. Shapiro's "Accelerated Information Processing" model is consistent with clinical observations. It has been known for some time that the shifting of the eyes is associated with increased brain processing. The most familiar example is that of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which occurs when we dream. It is generally agreed that the increased processing that occurs during dreaming causes the eyes to shift back and forth. With EMDR it appears that the reverse is also true, that a purposeful shifting of the eyes causes an increase in the brain's ability to process information, and the patient is fully awake and alert during the entire process.

Since one can literally accomplish in a single session with EMDR what used to take years with more traditional therapies, some rather amazing events began to occur in my psychotherapy sessions. I found, for example, that EMDR allowed such a rapid processing through the layers of anger and guilt, that patients were frequently ready to access their feelings of sadness in the first session. But even more than that, I found that if the patient could access the feeling of sadness, to any degree and at any time, in spite of concurrent feelings of anger and guilt, and focus on it with EMDR a clinically significant level of acceptance was imminent. When the feeling of sadness is rapidly processed in this manner with EMDR, one will also usually find that all of the associated anger and guilt have vanished, without even being directly addressed. This clinical observation supports the hypothesis that anger and guilt serve a protective or defensive function against the more painful feelings of sadness. When the loss is directly and successfully processed, and some level of acceptance is achieved, there is simply little reason for the patient to continue to feel anger or guilt.