Self-administered.
EMDR.
Should you try it?
Should you do it?
Is it safe?
Stay tuned.
I'm going to walk you through some of the complexities of this question and give you
information so you can decide for yourself.
So who am I?
My name is Barbara Heffernan and I am an approved EMDR consultant, which means that I can help
supervise EMDR clinicians who are trying to get trained to become certified and then eventually
approved consultants themselves.
So I have over a decade of experience in working with EMDR with people, both one-to-one in
person as well as one-to-one virtually.
And I've been looking into the self-administered EMDR question for a while now because I think
it can sometimes be a very useful either complement to existing therapy or complement to prior
therapy.
And then there also are some people who say they just did it and it was super helpful.
So just a little bit more about my background.
I'm also a mindfulness meditation instructor.
I also bring Buddhist philosophy into the work that I do with people and I now have
online coaching programs and I began this YouTube channel to bring all of these different
pieces together to try to help people live more joyful lives.
So if you support the work that I'm doing here, please subscribe to my channel.
And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up.
That helps a lot.
And let's get into the topic.
Today, I'm going to start with three things that I think are super helpful to assess whether
moving forward with EMDR processing is a good idea actually, whether it's by yourself or
with a therapist.
And then I'm going to talk about kind of what therapists do that I don't think can be replicated
with self-administered, EMDR, but how self-administered EMDR can still be helpful.
And then I'm going to talk about this site, the virtual EMDR website, which is kind of
in between the two.
So let's come back to the question.
Is self-administered EMDR safe?
Is it a good idea and should you try it?
So let me start by saying I've looked for research on this and I am not finding much
research at all other than on a website called Virtual EMDR, which is a website and a membership
program that kind of helps to walk you through the EMDR process.
And I will include a link for them below because I feel like it's a very useful site for many
people.
And they have anecdotal evidence and they have research that shows that 90% of people
who do their program lower how upsetting events are within one session.
So that's a little bit of data.
Other than that, there's a lot of anecdotal data that it is helpful for people.
But, without research it's very hard to give a definitive answer on this.
So what I would like to do is to share with you how a psychotherapist who's very well
trained in this might assess the situation and then you can do that for yourself.
So I think there are three things you might want to consider in deciding whether or not
to do self-administered EMDR.
And these are the same things you would be considering if you were in an office with
a therapist.
So one is the extent of your emotional regulation.
If you have complex post traumatic stress disorder and your emotions are very, very
disregulated.
The first step with a therapist would be resourcing would be learning more emotional regulation
tools and then maybe using a little bit of the eye movement to do some resourcing of
positive emotions or calming feelings before moving forward with processing.
So that would be one thing to assess is your level of emotional regulation or disregulation.
The second thing you might want to consider, which I think you also would be discussing
with a therapist if you saw one, is how well you're functioning.
If you are seriously depressed and suicidal thoughts.
That is not a situation where I would move forward with active EMDR processing.
Again, I would first start with some resourcing, some cognitive behavioral therapy tools to
help shift where you are in your life.
And I would be cautious about moving forward with processing, which can bring up all sorts
of disregulating information.
So that would be also something to be aware of.
Now when we talk about functioning, there are certain situations where somebody is not
functioning well, like agoraphobia, say where their anxiety is so high they can't leave
the house or they're afraid to go into certain situations.
That actually might be a situation where EMDR can work very well.
So there is an assessment that also goes into that question of functioning and as you are
probably making the connection, there's also a connection to how well you're functioning
and how you regulate your emotions.
Because when we can't regulate our emotions at all, we don't tend to function well.
So those would be two cautionary things.
And then the third thing is that therapists are trained to do a safe place exercise with
the client and I actually have a free mini course.
One of the things I walk you through in that mini course is something called a safe place
exercise.
And basically it's a question of whether you can bring to mind a place that's safe and
you can try it even just right now.
Can you bring to mind a place in your life where you feel safe, and if you bring that
place to mind, can you breathe in the feelings of safety that go with that place.
And if you have a safe place you can access, that's a very, very positive sign for moving
forward with EMDR processing.
So again, just to reiterate the three things to pay attention to.
One is your level of emotional regulation.
Two is how well you're functioning in your life and three is whether or not you have
access to feelings of physiological safety.
Now eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, that's always such a mouthful is a comprehensive
therapy technique.
So to really do EMDR therapy, I do believe you need a therapist.
It is a full blown therapy technique.
However, I also think that self-administered EMDR can help.
Now mostly what people seem to be doing with self administered EMDR is they're doing the
EMD, they're doing the desensitization part of the process, which is super helpful.
The reprocessing piece is actually replacing the negative core beliefs that came up with
your upsetting events and replacing those with a positive.
And then instilling the positive.
So if you simply pull up a light bar on YouTube and you begin to think about the negative
event while your eyes are moving and you experience the emotions and then over time your level
of upset goes down.
That's called desensitization.
If you are also able to identify the negative core belief that goes with that upsetting
event and you bring that upsetting event all the way down to a zero on a zero to 10 scale,
and then you're able to bring up the positive cognition and look at the same event with
that positive cognition in mind and have your feeling of how true that positive cognition
is, go all the way up to the maximum.
So your head and your heart know a hundred percent that that positive cognition is true
even while thinking about the upsetting event.
That's the reprocessing piece.
So I think the EMD, the eye movement desensitization, super helpful.
And I think some people can reprocess.
Again, particularly if you've been through EMDR yourself before or you've been through
a fair amount of therapy or overall you have not had serious traumas in your life.
You probably can do that last piece of the reprocessing by yourself.
What a therapist can help with is the therapist helps to provide, we call it cognitive interweaves,
but we help to bring in suggestions and tools and different techniques that can help the
person really truly reprocess the memory.
So I am very convinced that was some of the clients I worked with, they would not have
been able to get to a full reprocessing without a therapist, but that does not in any way
mean that they wouldn't have been helped by the desensitization.
So I know I'm not giving you a completely straightforward answer here because I don't
think there is one and I do think you'll have to make a decision for yourself and I'm hoping
that this video can help you make an informed decision.
So the things that therapists bring into the process where it's not just a kind of automatic
watch my finger process.
Okay, let's do it again.
Okay.
Process, right.
The therapist brings in different tools and techniques.
I will help the client regulate their emotion by bringing them closer to the event or providing
more distance.
Like there are times where I might ask the client to view the event through the lens
of a movie and I have a video on that which is the movie technique from EMDR and you can
try that for yourself as well.
But I will be in coordination with the client to notice when they are being flooded by emotion
or maybe even flooded by past memories and I'll help them to take a step back.
And then I also can utilize some tools.
If I see a client becoming numb or a client kind of dissociating from the memory, how
do we help them get into it more deeply so that the memory can be reprocessed.
So there are a lot of things that therapists do that I don't think can be re-replicated.
And I also think self-administered EMDR can be helpful.
So I kind of believe both and hopefully for you, particularly if you don't have access
to a therapist you might find doing self-administered EMDR to be super helpful for you.
And then the site that I mentioned, the Virtual EMDR site is mostly self-administered.
They do have coaches that you can check in with just to make sure that you are picking
the best targets and picking the best negative cognitions and positive cognitions and the
site itself walks you through the same questions a therapist would ask you.
So it's almost like in between completely doing it on your own and then doing it with
a therapist.
So check out that site.
You might find it interesting.
They do give a money back guarantee after I think 30 days.
Double check that cause that might change over time and they also I think have a free
period, a free trial period at first.
So you can try that and see if that provides kind of the middle ground completely doing
it on your own and a therapist.
Lastly, I'm going to re offer you the free mini course, the aah! mini series.
Many people have taken it.
I've gotten great reviews and that might help you with some of these self regulation techniques
that might help if you're choosing to move forward with this on your own.
So I wish you a lot of wellbeing on your recovery journey.
I truly do.
It's worth doing.
It is worth taking the time and if you need to invest in yourself, if you need to hire
a therapist, most therapists are online these days.
You can find a therapist online.
There are people all up and down the scale in terms of cost.
There's this Virtual EMDR website.
There are ways to invest in yourself.
Give yourself the time you need to heal, allow yourself the resources that are really going
to help you get there.
And I'm curious, post below, have you tried self-administered, EMDR?
Did it work?
Did my tools and techniques here help you?
Do they make you think about it in a different way?
Love to know what you're thinking.
Post your comments.
I read them all and make sure you subscribe to my channel.
I will keep putting out videos like this and I have a whole series of EMDR videos.
If you're interested that explain the process a little bit more and I will see you next
week.