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Did you ever wish there was some way you could organize your emotions better? For example, if you had something happen in your life that haunts you from time to time, wouldn’t it be great if there were some way to file it away? Give it it’s appropriate place in your life, and move on?

Well, as it turns out, there is!

According to the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing International Association, EMDR Therapy is the answer. Today we’re interviewing an EMDR Therapist all about what this is, and how it has helped millions of people move passed traumatic experiences.

Dr. Sara Gilman is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who has spent the past 32 years working in the areas of Traumatic Stress, Addictions, and Peak Performance.  She is the co-founder and President of Coherence Associates, a professional counseling firm, and has been awarded Fellowship status with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress for her extensive work in utilizing EMDR.

Sara was elected to serve on the EMDR International Association Board of Directors, is also one of their past presidents, a contributing author in two books addressing treating trauma in 911-Telecommunicators with EMDR Therapy, and has published research about utilizing EMDR with those struggling with the co-occurring disorders of addiction and trauma, in a drug court setting.

In addition, Sara lectures nationally and appears on radio and TV discussing the topics of stress, trauma, addiction, and mental toughness. She’s passionate about inspiring people to heal and grow through life’s challenges.

I hope you enjoy my discussion with Dr. Sara, so here’s the interview…

Interview with Dr. Sara Gilman on EMDR Therapy

Brian: Dr. Sara, welcome to the show. We’re so glad that you’re here today.

Sara: Thanks Brian.

Brian: I want to start with the obvious question. I’ve heard a lot about EMDR over the last several years. At first I had no idea what that meant so I looked it up and, frankly, I thought it sounded very unusual to say the least. But I kept hearing good things about it. In fact, I haven’t heard anything negative about it since I’ve learned, so I wanted to invite you on the show to talk all about EMDR.

Question: For those of us who don’t know what it is, what exactly is EMDR therapy?

Sara: Well, EMDR stands for ‘eye movement desensitization and reprocessing’.

It’s not new even though some people think it is. It’s a comprehensive therapy model, it’s integrated some different therapeutic approaches, and it’s been around since the early 80s. It’s also been one of the most highly researched psychotherapy methods. And it’s evidence-based now for PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Globally, EMDR therapy has helped literally millions and millions of people in the world, and hundreds of thousands of therapists are trained now. So, it’s not just a magical technique. It’s quite a comprehensive therapy model.

Question: Can you tell us how it actually works, and why the research says it works? Can you describe what you’re doing during an EMDR therapy session?

Sara: Wow, those are a lot of good questions. You know, we really don’t know how any of the therapeutic modalities work in our neurobiology (in the mind and the body). But what we know about EMDR is the eye movement portion is about activating both hemispheres of the brain, similar to REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, so we have this innate hardware. Whoever created us put this really cool system in place for us, like a computer, to take in all this data that we experience every day and then process it and file it in an orderly manner. That’s healthy the information processing. That’s when our mind, body and brain are healthy

Sometimes traumatic or significant experiences happen in our lives at any age, and we do our best to file them. Sometimes they’re not filed well and can produce symptoms of stress, psychological distress or even physical distress. So, EMDR sort of activates that system to help process the information that the person is focused on, to get it to file in a place that’s more efficient and isn’t causing the ongoing distress in the system.

Brian: If I can sum it up a little bit, you’re using eye movement to help the brain process potentially traumatic experiences. Is that right?

Sara: Right.

You know, we experience things what I call ‘holigraphically’, and that’s how we remember them. Sights, sounds, smells, visuals and feelings in our body and physical manifestations. So, if something’s not filed well, one of those is still hanging out like an image or a body sensation (like a flinch). So, when you activate the system to finish filing that, it’s sort of like it re-digests it in a way so that is no longer swirling around and causing any kind of distress. I like to use the computer analogy – when you feel like you’re not running efficiently, like you’re ‘buffering’ and you’re just not on your game, and there is something in the way – EMDR can reboot the system to reconnect and refile information that you don’t need to be experiencing.

It doesn’t delete the memory, you can still remember. It’s just that when you remember something that used to cause you upset, you simply remember it without the upset.

Brian: Considering the audience that is listening to this show right now, the thing that we have in common is we’re dealing with codependency issues, and a lot of times that’s brought on by traumatic experiences in younger years. About 20% – 25% of our audience suffers or has suffered from narcissistic abuse and there are various traumas that other folks may have endured.

Question: How do you know who is a good candidate for this type of therapy?

Sarah: That’s a great question. I do want to say personally, right when you’re texted me originally I was really taken aback by your blogging and your podcasts because I used to be the queen of codependency. Due to my own EMDR therapy I have been demoted, and I’m happy to say that.

I grew up in an addictive household and struggled with some things in my own adult life, I’ve dealt with recovery and addiction and then became a therapist. The most well-rounded codependents end up as therapists, right? So how does EMDR apply to this group of us?

When we grow up in an environment where we’re the caregiver and we’re overinvested in someone else our sense of ourselves, our self-esteem and self-worth begins to get influenced by this other situation. It can become confusing internally. We can go through traumatic experiences. We can have internal beliefs where we might say, “I should have been able to help. I should have saved them. I should have known what to do.” And then we have a diminished sense of our own selves.

EMDR processes and refiles some of those difficult situations. Some of them are scary when we think someone else’s health and well-being is at risk, or if we’re on the receiving end of violence that’s very threatening to the system. Even though we may have to revisit some of those memories and experiences, EMDR gets to refile them in bigger groups almost like helium out of an air balloon. The pressure, tension, sadness or whatever it is gets to dissipate because we don’t need the emotional energy now, we just need to restore our sense of ourselves.

The cool thing about EMDR is when the negative data gets refiled, what emerges is a positive thought, feeling, or body sensation. Perhaps you can now see the addict for who they are and not for their disease, and then realize that ‘I did everything I could’ or ‘I didn’t know what I didn’t know’. These positive thoughts come up in the midst of EMDR therapy and you feel more empowered. You have a more positive view of yourself, you’re less wrapped up in that fault that we get into as codependence (caregiving and over-involvement), and the healthy boundaries become easier for us to do without guilt and shame. After thirty years of being a therapist, I know that shame is a heavy burden, and some of the most beautiful EMDR sessions that I’ve been able to participate in have helped facilitate the release of shame, and the hold that it has on someone. That is powerful. I’ve been a therapist for a long time, and I was a therapist for ten years before I got trained in EMDR in the 90’s, and I didn’t have any tool in my tool belt that could release that the way that EMDR does and that’s where we call it the ‘magic’.

Twenty-five or thirty years later, we know now that that’s our neurobiology supporting our growth and removing and refiling things that we no longer need to be tripping over. We didn’t know that twenty-five or thirty years ago, but we kept doing EMDR because we’ve seen the results and the freedom that it really brings when your system is filed more efficiently and you feel so much better about yourself.

Question: If somebody were going to sit down into an EMDR session with you, what should they expect to experience? What would it look like?

Sarah: Well, a lot of it depends on what someone is coming in with. We see everything from significant childhood trauma to post-traumat