The Role of EMDR in Healing Trauma from Abuse

More than 970 Million people around the world are suffering from significant mental health challenges. Underlying a lot of that is trauma – an unfortunately very common root of present day struggle. When a person faces abuse of any kind, whether it is physical, sexual, or emotional, it can show up as both somatic or physiological, emotional, and spiritual distress. For instance, anxiety, depression, PTSD, and even dissociation. EMDR is an effective treatment for people to heal trauma, notably including abuse traumas. 

Let’s take a look at what EMDR is, how it works, and how it heals traumas in people.

Understanding Trauma from Abuse

Before moving forward to EMDR, let’s learn about trauma. Trauma occurs when a person experiences an extremely stressful event such as domestic violence, childhood abuse, or sexual assault.  On top of this, multiple traumatic life events can compound and build on each other creating a significant reactivity in someone’s system.  Abuse survivors often feel distorted and very uncomfortable memories or flashbacks, hypervigilance, and emotional numbness. This group can also find it hard to make new relationships with others. All of these symptoms are the signs of stuck trauma, and on the higher end of the scale, PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder).

Trauma caused by abuse can result in significant physical and emotional effects.  It can break the sense of self in a person and can lead to feelings such as powerlessness and worthlessness. There are various therapies available that help survivors in managing their negative thoughts and feelings, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  However, most of these therapies do not help in resolving the underlying root cause and emotions related to traumas. This is part of what makes EMDR both different and effective.

What is EMDR?

Francine Shapiro first introduced EMDR in the 1980s. It was first developed to treat the PTSD, and since then, it has been used to treat multiple types of traumas in people. Abuse trauma is one of them. 

Unlike other conventional abuse therapies, EMDR is not solely based on cognitive restructuring and talking. It uses bilateral stimulation like eye movement, auditory tones, and taps to assist your brand in reprocessing the memories of trauma.

The core mechanism of EMDR revolves around the fact that a person’s traumatic memories are unprocessed, or stuck. This is the reason it leads to emotional and physical distress every time it is triggered. They need to be reprocessed and desensitized to truly move past them to a place of balance, confidence, and resilience. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation, which allows survivors to relive their memories again, but this time in a less distressing way. 

The Role of EMDR in Healing Trauma from Abuse

Addressing Fragmented Memories

When trauma is stuck and unresolved it makes it hard for a person to process those memories again on their own. The bilateral stimulation technique in EMDR helps survivors to reorganize their memories and processes in a different way what happened during trauma. When a person reprocesses his memories from the traumatic experience, it gives them a chance to be able to truly address and move past those memories without feeling the stored charge that used to be associated with them. 

Reduction of Emotional Distress

Abuse trauma survivors can face emotional distress which is related to their abuse experience including even often feeling emotions like guilt, anger, or shame. With the help of desensitization of EMDR, survivors can reduce the impact and intensity of these emotions without feeling overwhelmed again every time they remember the memory.

Changing Core Beliefs

EMDR helps in replacing negative thoughts and beliefs with positive ones. Most survivors have negative beliefs deeply rooted in their system, like “I’m worthless” or “I’m unworthy.” These negative beliefs leave an impact on their daily lives, relationships, and even careers. However, EMDR helps them replace their negative thoughts with healthier and beneficial ones like “I’m worthy.”

Dealing with Triggers and Flashbacks

There are many triggers that make trauma survivors experience intense emotional flashbacks from their abuse. EMDR assists such survivors in reprocessing their memories, which reduces the impact of triggers. So in the future whenever the same triggers occur they won’t affect them the same as they did before. This gives survivors a realization that they are able to handle all those trigger situations without the reactivity they’ve experienced for years. 

Healing the Body-Mind Connection

Traumas caused by abuse can also manifest physically or somatically with problems like headaches, digestive issues, or chronic pain. The body scan of EMDR helps trauma survivors to identify their physical discomfort and reactivity related to traumas and confront them bravely.

Evidence-Based Effectiveness of EMDR

Various studies show the efficacy of EMDR in the treatment of traumas, specifically PTSD caused by abuse. Chen et al. (2014) conducted a meta-analysis and came to the conclusion that EDMR  shows better results than trauma-focused treatment to reduce the symptoms of PTSD. Another study conducted by Rothbaun et al. (2005) found that EMDR has reduced PTSD symptoms in just a few sessions as compared to traditional ways of therapy. 

Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the American Psychological Association (APA) endorse EMDR as an ideal treatment to heal PTSD and trauma. Both parties support the idea and effectiveness of EMDR in treating trauma caused by abuse.

Conclusion

EMDR has proven itself to be an effective trauma therapy, including for abuse trauma. It  offers evidence-based techniques to heal traumas caused by abuse. This process consists of eight phases to help the trauma survivors recover from traumatic experiences, move towards positive self-beliefs, and heal physically and mentally by reducing emotional distress. Researchers support EDMR’s efficacy as the most promising therapy for trauma survivors to recover from traumatic memories of abuse.

Take the first step towards healing today. Visit EMDR Therapy Nashville and schedule your consultation to start your journey to emotional well-being.

References

• Chen, R., Zhang, D., & Fan, C. (2014). Efficacy of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing for Patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Medicine, 93(29).

• Rothbaum, B. O., Astin, M. C., & Marsteller, F. (2005). Prolonged Exposure Versus Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for PTSD Rape Victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 18(6), 607-616.

• Shapiro, F. (2017). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy: Basic Principles, Protocols, and Procedures. The Guilford Press.