What do YOU think the eye movements are doing? Wrong answers only.

I have cptsd and I benefited significantly from emdr, I was 14, unable to go to school, barely able to socialize with people and had a whole host of other issues and behaviours, my life just felt like an endless revolving door of psych and hospital visits. I'm 20 now and I'm not "cured" by any means but I've been out of hospital for 2 maybe 3 years and I'm on my way to go to uni. I'm going to be honest, I don't really care if it wasn't the emdr itself that helped, I have wondered if maybe it was some sort of placebo, or the fact that somebody was finally listening to my story and stayed with me to cry it out. The support I had in that time helped me go from somebody nobody expected to recover to somebody that did. Hard not to be thankful for that. That being said I don't think things that don't work should be pushed on vulnerable people as a solution, there's always this pressure for us to do anything and everything to recover, and when it doesn't work then patients are left feeling like they "failed" therapy that was never effective in the first place. It's demotivating.

Here’s the thing I’m a psychologist with a neuroscience background and I had the exact same reservations as you. I also spent a ton of time in my 20s dabbling in the world of alternative health, getting reiki certifications and studying hypnosis. The reality of psychology in general right now is that it is in a catastrophic state from the perspective of empirical backing, even the most supposedly essential concepts are failing basic examinations of repeatability in a lab environment. This leaves us as practicing psychologists in a kind of difficult position where we have to put forward this idea of empirical backing to keep our accreditation intact while also not looking to deep behind the curtain because it is easy to feel like a fraud, even when you look at the studies about the supposedly most reputable systems like CBT. I think it’s fine to accept that we are still in the early days and that an individual psychologist themselves needs to be both open minded and very skeptical so they can assess what will work for what patient. I personally think a lot of the specific protocol that underlies EMDR is superfluous like the tapping and what is useful is basically based on a mix of conditioning training with bits of old school hypnosis thrown in. But, it has helped clients of mine that have gone though horrible things, and that is worth as much to me as a scientific study because as a psychologist we have no choice but to assess outside of the lab. We need to re think the entire process of empirical examination of psychological concepts from the ground up in addition to critically assessing old studies for statistical errors and biases, until that happens the individual psychologist has to rely on their own judgement while maintaining a sharp empirical sense.

My husband was abused for years by many men and in a lot of ways possible. His thoughts were constantly on the past abuse and he would nightmare all through his sleep day and night. My husband has gone through emdr now he has barely any thoughts of his abuse and no night mares. He had his first set of sessions and he did amazing no past abuse thoughts and no nightmares but a few short years later he saw one of his abusers in the newspaper and he regressed back to constant thoughts and nightmares again. He went back to the counsellor to go through emdr again. It didn't work as quick as the first time but it worked again. He had a trigger that caused the emdr results to regress but thankfully him going through emdr again he was able to overcome the constant thoughts and nightmares of his abused past as they all disappeared once again

i’ve done EMDR with two different therapists. one didn’t help at all, and the other has been massively impactful in lessening the intensity of emotion around the traumatic events. i truly think it depends on the skill of the professional and their understanding of ptsd

I have master's level training in counseling, extensive trauma, and have painstaking mapped what it's like as well as the recovery. Most of the explanations of it are pseudoscientific. In my experience, here is what is happening: Neurons that fire together, wire together. First, the patient is asked to think of a peaceful place and use somewhat of a guided imagery meditation to calm the nervous system. There is significant time spent engaging with this calm state while doing the bilateral stimulation. This becomes a conditioned stimulus, whereby the bilateral stimulation induces calm like Pavlov's bell made dogs salivate. Then, only after the calm state is paired with the bilateral stimulation, the patient is asked to recall the memories and emotional states related to the trauma. Afterwards, the patient is then asked to return to their calm mental place, again with the bilateral stimulation. The trauma is called up while engaging in eye movements followed by calling up the calm place while engaging in bilateral stimulation. This is causing the calm state to collapse into the trauma by using the bilateral stimulation to link disparate neuron clusters. This leads to bringing a state-dependent sense of safety and calm into the state-dependent sense of threat. This can be understood as using the way the brain responds to trauma, but in reverse. Just like someone who was assaulted by a person in a red shirt may later experience extreme fear at the sight of a red shirt, the brain can be brought to a state of associating safety and calm with previous trauma because the calm state is linked to the bilateral stimulation at the same time as it being linked to the trauma via operant conditioning. Because bilateral stimulation is such an unnaturally occurring stimulus, it is a blank experience that the therapist can use to effectively collapse the state-dependent sense of safety and calm with state-dependent sense of threat. Having good operational definitions leads to higher quality research with repeatable results. The biggest flaw is that they don't really try to understand what is happening to optimize the effects. Too many of the assumptions of how it works are useless woo-woo explanations.

I’m a licensed clinical psychologist and have worked in the mental health field for about 20 years. I’ve also participated in EMDR with my own therapist. I, too, am still skeptical, not of the fact that our minds and bodies are absolutely connected and that trauma lives in the body, as there is a lot of research to support this, but of the eye movement aspect. As for my experience as a patient, targeting traumatic memories through guided exposure did reduce the emotional charge of the event but the eye movement/tapping didn’t seem necessary. It was not a “magic” fix as some people say it is.

I had a therapist who did EMDR with me. I really didn't like it and don't think I got much, if anything, out of it. I hadn't ever heard of it before but she was resistant to doing anything else. I didn't know anything about EMDR and she didn't really explain it at all. So, I ended up just being confused. I did what she told me to do but after a while it just turned into me trying to figure out what she wanted me to say so that I could say that. After several months I finally insisted on doing something else and we did talk therapy instead, but she told me that in her experience people who wanted to do talk therapy didn't want to get better or make progress. She discharged me not too long afterward saying we'd accomplished everything we set out to do. I ended up with a different therapist and he never even mentioned EMDR which I was grateful for. He was a much better fit and I was able to deal with my anxiety in productive, actually helpful ways and was able to get a job and have been doing well ever since. From now on if I enter a therapist's office and they so much as mention EMDR I'm getting up and leaving immediately, and that has nothing to do with this video and everything to do with my experience with it. That therapist was actually a very nice older lady but she just wasn't helpful to me at all and wasn't interested in doing things I did think would be helpful because she was totally sold on EMDR.

I had this done years ago. It saved my sanity and worked perfectly. Since getting it done, I’m able to remember the horrible car accident I was in as a DRAMA, or movie, as we remember our memories. Before EMDR, when I would think of it, I would be in the middle of it, experiencing TRAUMA all over again in my body and all the emotions with it!! IT ACTUALLY SWITCHED THE WAY I REMEMBERED THINGS.. when the therapist was asking me to close my eyes and then open them and close them again, I “saw” myself floating above the car, and I thought it wasn’t working! But then I realized what was going on! It was pulling me out of the middle of the accident . I used to be an emotional wreck when anyone would talk about the accident or if I would see an accident, etc. After the sessions, it became just a memory, instead of a triggering event. I had it done in 2000, 6 sessions with a therapist.

I did EMDR. It helped, but then I realized just bringing up traumatic memories and thoughts and thinking about it until I calmed down helped just as much without moving my eyes.

One thing I think is incredibly useful to take into account is how different brains process differently. At this point I truly don't think there can be one treatment for any mental health condition that applies to every type of brain; EMDR might be using cognitive reprocessing, but for someone like myself with PTSD who is also significantly autistic and ADHD, the original approaches for talk therapy or psychotherapy don't work and sometimes actually worsen my wellbeing through the effort. I'm overly fixated on (deemed) irrelevant details, I get distracted by what I'm "supposed" to be doing for reactions and expressions, and I can't stay on topic or relax enough to find benefit, and that's over a decade of experience with different professionals at different levels. With EMDR, it's essentially adding a stim I can structure directly into the process with added consistency. It's the exact same each time (mine is on a screen with a sound effect that plays rhythmically in headphones), and gives my brain an extra task letting me only juggle what I need to. My therapist is really good and maintains a solid, consistent experience where I know exactly what happens, what she asks, what's expected of me, etc. The reason I say all of this is because autism and ADHD still have a long way to go in research, discovery and public education, and a lot of people go undiagnosed or misunderstand their own brains and needs. I fully believe it's possible that research would struggle at the gen pop level to figure out *who* this works for and why because the participants aren't being individualized enough, and in enough data. Obviously the other problems like wild claims, biased research, and bad practitioners taking advantage of it are factors and I don't discount those, but I'd love to see high quality research where consideration was paid to what aspects of EMDR are separately functional and why/who it applies to. I find EMDR to be incredibly effective for my multifactored and complicated PTSD, but I don't think that has to mean that the traditional justifications for the practice are worth defending. I think the merits are instead misunderstood or incorrectly attributed, and I just hope we don't "toss the baby out with the bath water" (I may know how that phrase is used, but wow I hate it 🤢).

I'm a therapist who uses EMDR with clients, and even before I got trained, I was concerned about EMDRIA and how they hoard info. If this is so amazing, we should be makinlag it easier to learn, right? I got trained outside EMDRIA, and the first thing we were told is "EMDR is easy. Working with trauma is hard." I don't know how EMDRIA approaches learning about trauma, but I had EMDRIA-trained classmates who talked about inadvertantly retraumatizing clients. We spent the first half of the training learning about trauma, not EMDR. I'd be curious to see more neurological studies on bilateral stimulation. My take on it is that our brain has a normal way of processing memories, but trauma blocks up that and prevents the memory going to long term storage. BLS provides enough distraction to let those deep processes do their thing. I don't know if BLS is necessary, but I'd be reluctant to say EMDR is "just" CBT and exposure therapy repackaged. It obviously includes those things, but it's more than that. I've done CETA, which combines CBT and exposure therapy, and I HATE it. It feels very harsh, and ignores the non-verbal ways trauma is experienced. There's something about the way the tapping (that's what I use) lets people get into their body and sidestep the prefrontal processes. It's an intense experience, but it takes so many of the traditional therapeutic processes and puts them into overdrive. But it sure as hell isn't a cure-all, and it isn't for everyone. Anyway, thanks for a good video, and doing so much research.

My mom was diagnosed with severe PTSD after a violent car accident she was subjected to. On top of that, she had a previous diagnosis of CPTSD from years of intimate partner violence. She went through years of therapy before one of her psychiatrists suggested EMDR. We talked about it a lot afterwards because I was diagnosed with CPTSD as well and it had a huge beneficial impact on her. Anecdotal evidence for sure, but I'm grateful for how helpful it was in her recovery.

I'm very sceptical in general, and despite my misgivings, i did a load of emdr sessions when they were offered to me to treat my ptsd. I approached it open-mindedly and sincerely gave it the benefit of the doubt. If others get benefit from it, then that's fantastic, but in my case, it felt like a profound waste of time and explicitly worse than just talking through my issues.

I heard about emdr therapy and immediately thought "woo woo" But my partner has cptsd and anyone suffering from that knows how extreme and awful it can be. Resistant to treatment, too. Emdr was the first thing we tried that seemed to help. I don't know why it helped. Maybe it just helped signal to the brain that they were safe, activating the parasympathetic nervous system. Maybe it does something else. Maybe it just changed the dynamic between patient and practitioner. I don't know. It was the first effective step to recovery for my partner. Anecdote. No proven causal method. If nothing else has worked, the worst that can happen is it doesn't work and you lost some money. At least it's not dangerous fake medicine or something

I have ADHD (but not PTSD) and my therapist and I sometimes do very brief EMDR sessions. Sometimes when we’re talking about something upsetting, he’ll ask me to recall a positive memory, like thrift shopping for ugly sweaters with a friend. He’ll then ask me to recall details from those positive experiences while we do the eye movements, rinse and repeat for 2-3 times. Idk how scientific it is, but it is helpful to focus in on positive memories and I do think I can recall them better afterwards. It’s also slightly silly which I think additionally fosters a positive experience. I don’t think any of that necessarily has to do with the eye movements and/or bilateral stimulation but I thought I’d share my experience for anyone who’s interested since it seems different than a lot of people’s. Healthy and happy wishes to y’all

I was treated by a therapist using EMDR about 10 years ago. It helped me tremendously.

I have CPTSD and had tried EMDR therapy after hearing how effective it is to treat trauma. It did nothing for me. I thought there was something wrong with me. I’m so relieved to find this video! This whole time I thought that EMDR was an undisputed, proven treatment. I feel relieved. Thank you!

This was super informative but I kept waiting for you to mention cases where people responded negatively to the treatment, and I wish you had because I'm sure I'm not alone. I tried it when I was 20, I had suffered from SA at 16 and gone to a regular talk therapist for 4 years that helped a little, but I couldn't move past the trauma, it was debilitating. Then my mom heard about this miracle cure for PTSD called EMDR. At the time I was so desperate for help, I barely did any research and just went for it, at an extremely vulnerable state. It was horrible. The little bit of clarity I had managed through regular talk therapy was shattered. I came out of every EMDR session feeling extremely suicidal and and dissociating (I did about 6 sessions). I don't know what training she had, but we didn't go through the 8 steps you talked about, we pretty much only did the desensitization where she had me relive the trauma through all the senses: what did I see during the assault, what did it smell like, what sounds etc. I'm not a professional at all but I'm pretty sure nothing good can come out of reliving a traumatic experience so vividly, especially without first establishing trust between client-therapist, without giving the client any tools to manage their suicidal tendencies... I mean that's the whole reason I went in the first place. Years later I finally decided to get on medication and went to see a psychiatrist who'd never heard of EMDR and was appalled by the way I described my experience with it. I'm happy for the people who found comfort through EMDR. Whatever works! But if you feel your experience was negative and you feel hopeless for feeling worse after getting the treatment that seems to be miraculous for everybody else, please don't despair. You're not alone and I love you

I remember learning about EMDR in a psychology class and the instructor was literally like "yeah no one knows why this works but it does really seem to so we use it". I later did get emdr treatment myself and I do feel like it helped.

I was in jail in Costa Rica and the country sent me a psychologist and also sent me to an office of a Dr, phycotherapist. I was in jail in a foreign country... I was a victim of domestic violence, and they thought I needed help, as an innocent person. I was under alot if stress. This female doctor was Dutch and had trained in this. She told me she was going to try something and if I would be willing to try it. I like her vibe and I was stressed so I let her. She did some face tapping and my whole body calmed down right away. She did some more body tapping, just a tiny bit, and just a little eye movement stuff. It helped me a lot. She taught me how to tap my own face in case I was getting stir crazy in confinement. It really helped. I won my case and now I'm free. I like alternative health stuff because I don't like prescription drugs because my father was over prescribed and died from it. So I support the technique, but I don't know how I feel about the training and things.

As someone who benefited from EMDR, I'm sort of surprised that the explanation of why it works seems so different from how it was explained to me by my psychologist. They were pretty open about the fact that the light-bar was just a method, but the important part was the distraction. They told me they sometimes do the therapy with just finger movement, but that there are also therapists who shove a Tetris cartridge in a patients hand and have them work through it that way.

I had a psychologist (psy-d) label me as difficult and framing my entire life in rebellion against authority because on a pretreatment survey question ("is there anything else I should know?") I listed that I'm not interested in EMDR because I'm skeptical of it. It was beyond bizarre and, shockingly, that therapist and I didn't work out.

I was told to take EMDR therapy, but something about the idea made me incredibly uncomfortable so I refused. My family has often held this over my head saying that I was choosing not to get better. This video has made me feel much better about my decision, thank you.

My mom did it and she felt that it was cathartic because it made her cry a lot. I did it and it felt the exact same as talking about the things I was talking about WITHOUT the EMDR element. Exactly the same. She has lots of traumas that she can't remember whereas I remember everything. She feels like the EMDR is tapping into some secret part of her that's traumatized and maybe it is but maybe she also is overwhelmed by trying to reach those parts of herself so she cries a lot and then this creates the perception (real or not) that catharsis occurred.

What annoys me most is that i was in training back in 2008 i was in a trauma lab doing research on pseudoscience. The evidence is still the same nearly 15 years later and EMDR had only gotten more widespread. They rope in mostly masters level therapists in to an expensive training because they haven't had a extensive training in research and evidence based practice. I know because i transferred from a university phd program to a small masters level lpc program. I realized i preferred community based therapy and didn't want to continue my insanely expensive phd program for many reasons. The difference in training was really really noticable - in my masters program there was very little actual research read. Very little emphasis on why something was effective or ineffective. We had a few people come present on therapies that were pseudoscience -a hypnotherapist talking about energy meridians comes to mind. I loved my program and they did much better at focusing on the therapeutic relationship, but the science was definitely an afterthought. The worst part was that it produced therapists who can't read research or discern things like bias or confounding variables, nor did they get much training on how to treat ptsd effectively. I am not surprised given the state of mental health therapy cash grabs right now, but I'm definitely disappointed. There are definitely components of EMDR that are effective, and you do not need to waste time and money on EMDR to get trained in the effective part. Therapist need to be better trained in treating trauma and ptsd, and i hate that emdr fills that space up instead of more effective trainings.

I have CPTSD and EMDR is changing my life! I've heard others in my cptsd support groups didn't get on with emdr though. I believe the therapist plays a big part in whether a therapy will be successful or not, and I'm lucky to have an incredible emdr therapist. ❤

I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and LOVE this video. It is spot on with everything. Shapiro has done nothing new and borrowed from other energy and CBT techniques that came way before her. Roger Callahan with Thought Field Therapy used rapid eye movements with algorithms, and it resembles Emotional Freedom Technique energy work. It's all the same just calling it something different, claiming it unique and charging too much money to be trained. What may be happening is probably classical conditioning and/or desensitization or even the placebo effect. I loved your last quote "what's effective in EMDR is not new and what's new in EMDR is not effective." I also agree with your assertion that the training is "churning out fanatics" and not unbiased clinicians since the training is so ridiculously expensive.

As someone diagnosed with PTSD - I think it might depend on the source of the trauma. In my case, the trauma came from being around people and in environments where my self expression was blocked, and I was expected to be people's punching bag and guinea pig for experiments. So EMDR didn't do anything for me. What did help, was ending all relationships, including those with therapists, who did not believe in what I wanted for my life and who I wanted to be, and I put myself in places and amongst people where my self expression and authenticity is welcomed. Sometimes the best treatment is knowing who you are and what that needs to be supported. I have upset a lot of therapists with this concept and that is concerning.

One of my therapists had gone through a couple levels of training but didn't buy in to it being a miracle therapy. Her take was that the movements and stimulation helped keep patients from dissociation but also provided just enough of a distraction to keep them from fixating on the issue being discussed. My current therapist drew the same conclusion from reading all the studies. If I'm having a rough time working through something with lots of big emotions, I'll play video games (nothing that takes a lot of brain power) while we talk. The game provides just enough distraction to keep me from being overwhelmed by the feelings but not so much that I can't carry on a conversation. I'm also less likely to overthink my responses.

For the coals fire walk mention around 34 minutes, I think it's worth pointing out that coal walking is a bit of misnomer. People are actually walking on the ash from the coals. Ash, being a poor conductor, would take more than just a moment for the heat to transfer and burn you, but in standing still you definitely would be burned. When people coal walk they are not walking on the coals directly. Anyway this sort of trick is a common ploy and worth mentioning.

While doing emdr therapy did help me uncover traumatic memories i'd repressed, i think it was more down to the therapist being a grandpa type man who believed me about my abuse when my whole family had always insisted i was a crazy liar who must have wanted to be molested for the attention. My practitioner was very frank with me that emdr doesnt work for everyone, can make some people's trauma symptoms worse, and is really only effective on people who can be hypnotised/are vulnerable to suggestion.

my last therapist had me try emdr. it brought back a lot of stuff that i had forgotten. i just went in to get help with managing adhd, not unbury the traumas that didn't need to be excavated. before that i was doing okay mentally, and afterwards, i was not okay at all

I had a horrible experience with an EDMR therapist. She just left me hanging didnt get me more help and got angry at me for responding with panic.

EMDR helped me so much with my PTSD My brain learned to sort itself out I still get triggered but my brain will sort me out It may take a few days but I can feel it happen. I was given almost ten weeks preparation, where I was taught coping strategies to help when they had to leave me hanging. An appointment is an hour long and they can’t always get you through what comes up in that time. I was then given around 12 weeks EMDR therapy by a mental health nurse. It was amazing and I couldn’t believe what she enabled my brain to do. Such a strange and powerful journey. By the end she had not only addressed the situation that had triggered my PTSD but also what my brain could do when I encountered new triggering situations. It felt like my brain learned skills to sort out trauma. The most amazing thing as this was all provided by the amazing NHS. Britains jewel in the crown. If we don’t look after the NHS we will lose our most precious resource. This was in around 2018 PS it is short therapy when it sorts out the problem so you don’t need to go back and have more therapy. 22 weeks EMDR was fast acting after years of ineffective CBT.

I clicked this video precisely because it sounded like a topic I had never heard of among the random KZfaq recommendations. Fascinating.

Thank you for this. As a retired psychiatrist I thought many of the things you covered and was relieved to feel I was not alone. It was also great to learn more. One thing you didn't mention but which bothered me, probably early in its 'life', was the preponderance of positive studies being performed by the same cohort of researchers including Shapiro herself. It felt a little bit like a large ad campaign especially when coupled with the strict requirements that training could only be given by a small selection of devotees.

I'm leaving a super long comment (sorry not sorry) because I have thoughts, having been formally certified in emdr (paid just about what you said) but not ever really practicing it beyond the training process and shortly after while I still had an emdr-trained supervisor. First off this is a fantastic video, thank you for the very constructive work here, very aesthetically pleasing too, I watched the whole thing and enjoyed it a lot. I was trained in emdr around the time of graduating my msw program because I heard about it through a professor who was trained and was a regional trainer in emdr. I was just like, oh o.k. that sounds like an interesting premise for a treatment modality, and I want to gain some extra skills before graduating. Mostly for me, the "suds score" aspect of emdr was what bothered me the most. Even though I think there are valid times to use numerical ratings in therapy, I don't like how ingrained and regular it seemed to me to be in emdr, and I always felt like the client must be experiencing pressure to tell the therapist that the suds score is going down. I think regular talk therapy (which I do as a practitioner) already has the risk of patronizing or alienating clients with overly formal approaches, but I really got this feeling more prominently with emdr, like I could end up feeling like I was inviting the client into a sort of therapeutic game rather than just engaging with them where they're at. I think that there's some significant amount of placebo effect in the bilateral stimulation, but I will say that to me the best thing about the bilateral stimulation in emdr is the way it brings extended pauses and silence (for like 30 seconds or so on average, iirc) into a therapy session in a way that can be very helpful. It can be basically impossible to pause for so long in a normal talk therapy session, but pauses like that can help clients access feelings. I'll also say, for what it's worth, during the training I did (3 8-hour days one weekend and then 3 more a month later, with some consultation in between and after), at one point we did the treatment modality with each other as clients, and I was in a kind of stubborn or bored mood or something, so I used "I don't have anything to talk about really" or something like that as my 'initial problem' and... I ended up crying. Not usually one to cry a lot, and like I wasn't manipulated or anything, trust me on that, I just accessed emotions pretty quick on that occasion. Not that I think this happens all the time obviously, it doesn't happen all the time and certainly wouldn't happen for me all the time. It just gave me that personal confidence that the modality can be effective. Still that wasn't enough to make me want to seek an emdr supervisor so I could practice it. The context of emdr coming on the scene only 7 years after ptsd is a diagnosis in the dsm was a great point. I never knew francine's history, being in tony robbins's sphere and being involved in nlp. I definitely think the origin story or francine's park walk is right to be seen as a kooky thing that's been formalized in non kooky ways and can therefore be practiced in either kooky or non kooky ways depending on the practitioner. And hey maybe some people also want kooky things and that's valid, but marketing is what can make it a problem, as this video covers very well. Despite the messed up ways she marketed and avoided criticism on her development of her theory, I always just intuitively related to francine's experience in that origin story in that I'll have experiences of my senses and then draw deeper conclusions from those experiences, or my reflections on those experiences. But I guess that's a very different thing from trying to market such a theory. I'm glad I dipped my toes in it, but after watching this video extremely glad I didn't pursue the modality. Glad you cover that emdr is an effective treatment though despite its origin, that's an important aspect of the story. O.K. I'm done, thanks again.

I'd love to see a factual breakdown of 12 steps programs for healing addiction. I feel like vulnerable and desperate people get misled by countless centers who all sound like they are unique but in reality they are all using one, antiquated program that has years of evidence that it is failing roughly 92% on a consistent basis since 1939, but still everyone talks and acts like it is a solution for the "disease" of addiction. I couldn't believe what was going on when I realized the truth and I can't understand how it is allowed to continue.

About thirteen years ago I was enduring a traumatic event in my life and a friend of mine, a doctorate psychologist trained in EMDR, advised me to seek a therapist in my state who practices EMDR. I don’t recall it did much of anything for me. After the EMDR I was still in crisis. It was still traumatic. The stakes were high: my mental & physical health were both under threat. Resolving the issue at hand was what it ultimately took to bring me the relief I needed, and restore my sanity. Deep down I knew that all along. It was my friend’s recommendation that prompted me to try EMDR, and take all these expensive supplements to help “balance my brain chemistry”. Hogwash. My brain is just fine, thank you. I just needed the damn issue resolved.

I am a first responder who suffered with PTSI. I first learned of EMDR reading Bessel Van der Kolk’s book, ‘The Body Keeps the Score.’ If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me, and I credit EMDR with saving my life.

EMDR kind of sounds like a kind of gentle exposure therapy to me.

Ironically, though many practitioners avoid us heavily dissociative clients, I find that any talk therapy has been almost completely ineffective, unlike EMDR. It's hard to treat cptsd with talk therapy, if you have no clue WHAT the trauma actually is, if it's hard to even form words about it. But emdr has had some efficacy, though it's definitely not a short therapy with my issues, not by a long shot, more like years long, with other methods between the emdr sessions, stabilising daily life.

After my first EMDR session I remember thinking "what was this supposed to do?"... Oddly, when my therapist asked me about the negative feelings connected to a certain memory, they were gone. I remember feeling as if someone had pulled a trick on me. Feelings that had persisted over two decades... How could they be gone? I still remembered the event and I also remember feeling terribly about it, but the feeling itself, that was just... Gone. After a few sessions, I felt ready to take on life again. A big burden had indeed been taken off my shoulders. I never believed it would work, yet it did. Almost two decades later, the effect is still there. In my personal experience, it's nothing short of a miracle, and I don't generally believe in miracles. Having said all that... EMDR most certainly isn't a cure all. In people and situations that may seem very similar, results can vary from curative to disastrous. Key is to have a therapist that is very well trained, not just in performing a technique (that's the easy part), but in constantly checking in to see if the therapy is having it's desired effect. An EMDR therapist should be trained in many different techniques. PTSD patients may for example go through reliving their trauma on a deeper level and go into a dissociative state. EMDR itself isn't suitable to help someone in that situation. A licensed and well trained psychologist or psychiatrist should know how to handle such a situation. Sadly, there are also people who claim to be EMDR therapists, who don't know much more than to perform a trick, that will work for some people, but will seriously harm others. A friend of mine who has CPTSD was told "she didn't try hard enough" and that's why EMDR didn't work for her. That's complete nonsense and gaslighting. Luckily she's a very strong person and she found different help that actually improved her situation. I don't want to think of what would have happened to her if she had listened to that EMDR therapist. She would have been off much worse. In conclusion: EMDR may effectively relieve suffering caused by trauma, if performed by a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist who is well versed in other techniques and doesn't blindly trust in EMDR as a cure all. It's not effective for everyone and that is never the patients fault.

This puts my EMDR experience into a much clearer perspective. I've had two EMDR therapists with two drastically different experiences. The part where you talked about the fanaticism among clinicians especially made sense given their differences. One of my therapists had been specialized in and practiced EMDR for 20 years and I had exactly one session with her before lying that I felt better and hightailing it. Her method made the trauma more intensive and I was only able to know that wasn't effective for my PTSD long-term because of the EMDR therapist before her not inflicting that harm. In particular there was no telling her that the method wasn't working, I voiced my frustrations multiple times and she'd brush it off to say I needed to replay the memory again until it was less intense. I really have to wonder if desensitize to them isn't another word for numb. And even with the other EMDR therapist who *did* have a positive impact, the success had nothing to do with eye movement but the elements brought in from different therapeutic strategies. To this day I can't recall a time where tapping my thighs did the same as distress tolerance skills or the safe place she had me construct. Hell, even dunking my head in ice water is backed up with a proven physiological effect on the body.

22 years ago I did the old school PTSD immersion therapy and it was so effective. It was hard but well worth it. You repeat a traumatic memory for 45 min while the therapist records it. You then listen to the tape every morning and evening, then go back the next week and do it again. Its an 8 to 12 week process. My PTSD symptoms were so bad before, sometimes crippling. This immersion therapy caused my symptoms to dramatically drop around week 7. I know people who have suffered from PTSD for decades and its sad because there is an effective treatment.

Thank you so much for this video. I felt like a failure for YEARS because EMDR did nothing at all for me, except send me into flashbacks/dissociation/psychosis at worst, and made me giddy and confused at the best. The psychiatrist I had went through the whole technique and explained in detail how it apparently worked; I can't fault them at all, they were very knowledgeable and truly believed that EMDR was the best thing for dealing with trauma. And maybe, for some people, it is -- and more power to them. Keep doing what works, by ALL means! But the fact that it didn't work for me, and I never wanted to do it again made a lot of therapists/psych*s I worked with incredibly annoyed or dismiss me as non-compliant. So many people I knew got so much out of it, I honestly thought that my brain was just broken beyond repair and there was no healing from my trauma. Hearing that no, it doesn't work for everyone, and it's a tad woo-woo on top of everything else has been massively validating. Maybe there is healing to be found somewhere for me, and it's fine that EMDR can't do it.

EMDR was the only thing that got me through a profoundly traumatic period. Nothing else worked, including CBT, meds, psychodynamic therapy and numerous other modalities. But EMDR did the trick, though it took a while. Re the utility of bilateral eye movements, recent real time brain imaging studies show they reduce neuronal activity associated with the fear response within the amygdala. Thus enabling us to confront fears without being overwhelmed. Some evolutionary biologists believe that the combination of rapid eye movements and reduced fear, enabled our hominid ancestors to survive violent conflicts - by ensuring we could scan the dangerous environment while remaining relatively calm under pressure. EMDR hacks into this ancient biology coding.

I just discovered your channel with this video--thank you for making the thoughtful content that you do! I'm a psychologist myself, and I have often had thoughts about putting together videos along the lines of yours. Now that I know you're out there, I definitely feel this need quite a bit less!

I'm a huge skeptic and very science based. Hypnosis, chiropractors, homeopathics, new age stuff, etc; all that stuff is silly to me. So I remember hearing about EMDR and laughing. But I also have tourettes. Then I discovered coincidentally that moving my eyes back and forth had a significant effect on my tics. Then I remembered about EMDR. I spoke with an emdr therapist out of curiosity and she claimed it was was helping integrate the R+L hemispheres of my brain so they could communicate more effectively (and that if this is done while reprocessing memories, you can relearn how you/your brain reacts to it). She offered me a free session. It was only 20 minutes but I literally laughed out loud at how effective it was for me. I paid for 5 more sessions after that. But I haven't a soul besides my mom... Because it still sounds ridiculous (even though it helps me so much lol). Everyday I do a few minutes of it at home myself now. But I understand the controversy 1000%!

Sometimes i feel like we know nothing about how to treat mental illness

Merry Christmas to me, my favorite gift by far this year is finding this channel

I benefited from EMDR treatment for a specific life-threatening event. It wasn’t very helpful after a later, repeated traumatic experience, but I digress. One thing that has always bothered me is that my therapist always wanted me to reach a “0 distress” level related to the event. I don’t think it’s rational to have NO distress at all when thinking about a traumatic event. We *should* be upset, sad, or mad in some regard. I had 12ish (maybe more, I forget) sessions and could never reach a 0. If it’s keeping you from functioning, which is was prior to my treatment, that is a problem, but why is it that our conception of treatment so often is “you have a problem and we need to fix it”?

I have had 6 EMDR sessions over the past four months that freed me from Complex childhood PTSD. It worked like the surgical removal of a toumer, even if I go looking for the pain it's just not there. I usually use tapping my legs alternately, or the butterfly on my chest. I was told it was to blur or confuse the separation between the left and right hemispheres of the brain to enable the verbal visualizations to burrow all the way to the core of the trauma's origin so that place can be replaced with strengthening verbal visualizations of security and things you love. It works for me. Like a Priest saying, 'DEVIL BE GONE!'. I still have the effects of that abuse in my personality and perceptions, but I can focus on improving more clearly without the constant fear and pain eating at me.

Whatever I was supposed to be feeling, I couldn't. In the bilateral stimulation sessions, all I could do is think about everything in materialistic terms, like it just felt like a little plastic thing buzzing in my hand and nothing else. The more I felt the expectation of something miraculous to start happening, the more anxious I felt, and my thoughts got foggier to the point where I couldn't hold the thing I was supposed to be thinking about in my minds eye. I felt weird guilt every time my pain level to intrusive thoughts didnt go down, and also anxious that my session time was being spent on EMDR instead of talk therapy, which is what I find most helpful. Eventually I said to my therapist that I felt so embarrassed like I was being expected to roleplay as a character who gets better or something, and they were really receptive and pivoted back to talk therapy, which I'm thankful for. I don't hold it against them, because it's definitely possible that it could work differently for different people.

When I was trained in it, the biggest red flag for me was when we were told about "processing the trauma of your own birth" and told stories about people who spontaneously recalled their own births in vivid detail. I call BS, lost me right there. It was probably 15 years ago when that happened.

I did a research project for grad school about 10 years ago re EMDR And my understanding of reviewing all the literature is that as the eyes are going back-and-forth, it mirrors a dream state of deep sleep, which allows the mind to open UP the pathways to a more full experience of the trauma event in order to process it thoroughly through. Engaging with the therapist and having an overall feeling of safety and trust in a therapeutic process is also essential. It's a combination of all of these that really help the therapeutic process.

I tried this with an old therapist once of twice. It didn't work for me because I couldn't concentrate on the eye movement and I got too sleepy. I had so much problems with attention for EMDR. I also expressed my skepticism when it was explained to me before hand. Can't lie, I feel semi-vindicated by this video even though it works for some people.

So Im in the middle of EMDR therapy with a psychologist who does both CBT and EMDR. I'm autistic and have a sound fixation; the EMDR I"m doing uses both sound and eye movement. Last week was the second in a set of memories that have some very heavy topics. I expect my anxiety and the resultant bad week as echos of the sessions affected my sleeping patterns afterwards would have been the same with CBT. I was tempted to do an emergency session with my therapist (it's always an option). I finally managed to properly sleep though and have been much better since then. Reflecting on those same memories now though.. they aren't immediately triggering bad things. The exposure is working. I"v been doing EMDR now for 12 months; the memories from the start of EMDR are still no longer triggering fight or flight responses. They are unpleasant but I'm no longer having panic attacks or other issues from them. None of my nightmares contain those memories anymore. Regarding the purple hat metaphor ... as you noted behind it is some standard therapy. What the purple hat is doing in that context is providing a focus - a vehicle for change. Just because it might be a placebo doesn't mean it won't work provided people also do the other actions that are involved in the therapy. And there is other actions; on reflection I do end up talking a lot about my feeling and I am constantly being exposed to sections of my bad memories over and over until they become disconnected to my fight and flight response. So for me it works; I'm okay that part of this may involve a 'placebo'. The structure of the sessions and having a known progression though makes therapy less anxious as a whole. I'm also not compelled to reduce my score. Or at least I don't feel that. And the results have been positive - there are words that used to cause lots of anxiety and panic which are much less distresing now. I have a lot less nightmares. We still have some way to go - it's taken us 12 months to get into the really heavy elements of my CPTSD. But Im hopeful and positive about the outcome.

As someone who has been subjected to both EMDR and NLP ... I really want you to make that NLP video.

i got EMDR from my therapist (provided to me by my university bc we get abt 12 free counseling sessions with tuition, just for context) over the course of maybe a year. I won't go into the specific issues I was dealing with, but I'll just say it was partially guilt-fueled OCD over real events/intrusive thoughts, and some trauma from past abuse. I had gone to my very first appointment there and ended up with a random therapist, who after the appointment referred me to the therapist I was with for the long haul because she specialized in my specific traumas/issues. And I'm glad she did, because she was great! She helped me through my specific issues with the care and understanding I was afraid I wouldn't be afforded, and she had experience with exactly that kind of stuff. As a therapist she's amazing. The EMDR wasn't bad, it was done well, I think. Instead of finger movement, it was a bar with lights on it that would kind of move right to left over the course of a few seconds, along with headphones playing the beeps, and a thing in my hand that would vibrate every time the lights made it to one end of the bar. She executed it well and did it basically as described, she was really good at it. Looking back, I think what helped me the most was just talking with her. At one point we even just decided the EMDR was kind of unnecessary and from that point our sessions were just talking. The EMDR is helpful to some degree, maybe more depending on the person. For the most part though, the amount of time I'd have to sit with a certain memory/feeling was a bit too long. Not in that it was re-traumatizing, but in that I have ADHD and after maybe like 3 minutes I wouldn't even remember what I was supposed to be thinking about, and had shifted to thinking of what I was gonna do later. So to be fair, part of the 'desensitization' was that I had just kind of gotten bored of the trauma, and became more concerned with what snack I was gonna have when I got home. Which does technically count, I think. It did sort of work as intended too, when I managed to concentrate for the entire time. It also may have had something to do with me misunderstanding the number rating system. I'd be asked after how disturbing a memory was and rather than answer how anxious it was *currently* making me feel, I think I answered it more as an objective amount of 'how much that sucks' and how I'd feel just hearing about the event. Which would lead to even more boredom as I'd be sat dealing with a memory I'd already gotten over a couple rounds ago but I still said 3 out of 10 because I still thought the event objectively sucked, lol.

Here from Nebula to comment: I suspect there are two other things going on with EMDR's popularity. First is that it gives people who're concerned about stigma the veneer of respectability of a non-"therapy" form of assistance. (Even though talk-therapy is an integral part of the EMDR process, the client can pass it off as not being so-perhaps even to themselves, if need be.) Secondly, for those who have trouble opening up about their traumas to other people, EMDR seems to involve relatively little talking about the details. Relatively low vulnerability.

I was actually trying to find more critical information about EMDR a few months ago, and it was really hard to come across accessible information. Thank you for this video!

Really enjoyed this! As a hypnotist, I see so many clients who were retraumatized by EMDR after trying it for years in some cases with no improvement. I’ve also heard the lore of her involvement with the NLP guys in my EMI training (eye movement integration, what she modeled EMDR after). Was so glad you brought this into the story!

EMDR has helped me more than years of CBT therapy ever did

Would love to see a video about hypnosis! I was "hypnotized" on stage once -- except I wasn't, and was 100% fully conscious and in control of my faculties the whole time, but just deciding to play along. But some of the other people claimed to have no memory of the experience and I'd love to understand it better

I had an EMDR treatment 25-30 years ago. It did nothing for me. Zero. Nothing. I was confused by it to be honest. What did I pay for? Oh, nothing.

Ive been doing these emdr exercises but without recalling trauma ' i followed another video for vagus nerve reset and its basically these eye movements with the necm turned to the side ....i had the result of sighing a lot and laughing but i also noticed my anxiety seemed to increase the days after like many people describe with emdr....is that possible even without thr recalling of trauma ?? Thanks

Before I retired from therapy at a low-fee clinic, a friend asked if I would be his therapist. Of course, I could not do that, but I referred him to a colleague at the clinic. Sometime later, he told me that she had been sympathetic, but he didn’t feel any progress until he found an EMDR therapist. Curious, I took the beginner’s training and started using it. I remember one client, an adult male who had been raped by an older boy when he was in grade school. After a month of so of weekly EMDR sessions, he told me, “I no longer hate myself”. After hearing your presentation, I really would like to know if after the few years that have passed, he still is free from that self-hatred. I suspect that much of the “science” we are sold these days is research that has been conducted by those who benefit financially from the results they have coaxed from the data. Especially pharmaceutical research. Thank you for making me more aware! Oh, and I remember during the EMDR training someone asked the trainer where Shapiro got this technique. He said he thought she got it while she was abducted by aliens. I think he was kidding.

I have my first appointment March 5 for EMDR. My aunt said it helped her a lot, whereas my former friend said it just made her phobias worse. My main thing is I heard EMDR can help those who have blocked memories, which I have. I have a lot of trauma, but I can’t remember a thing that happened aside from a few events. I have yet to watch the video, I don’t want it to sway my decision on going through with it 🥲 because otherwise I feel like I can’t get help with my issues, since they stem from these long forgotten memories.

I’d been in therapy most of my life talking about trauma and abuse until I was bored of my own stories but was still traumatized. Emdr has been really helpful and when I do emdr on a topic I am just no longer traumatized by it. It’s the only thing that’s really worked but it does take a lot to be able to do it.

I just knew I couldn't be the only clinical therapist (MSW over 30 years) that sees this as BS. It completely discounts all the other aspects of trauma!! People who believe in this WANT TO BELIEVE it works. The most uneducated "counselors"(clickety click online colleges) with barely any experience have become snake oil sales people on EMDR. Just like rubbing CBD oil on your joint doesn't cure arthritis, bouncing eyeballs and relaxation exercises don't resolve sexual abuse issues or bipolar disorder. Thanks for letting me voice my feelings on this to people who are also logical and properly educated in mental health services. What a nice Xmas gift to myself LOL! Peace Out.

I remember hearing about EMDR from a book called “The Body Keeps Score” by Dr. Bessel A. Von Der Kolk.

EMDR was the only thing that relieved my daughter of a very specific and debilitating emotional trauma that she suffered as a child. It was literally the only thing that helped. Everything exists all at once.

Thank you for posting this video. I have CPTSD and found EMDR unhelpful but almost guilty because it wasn't working for me, like it was that I wasn't trying hard enough to get or something. Eventually I quit therapy with that therapist because they were so focused on doing the EMDR only. It's so validating to know more about the history and research into its efficacy. Now I don't feel like I failed at it, it's just a thing that doesn't always work for everyone

Thank you for a great video. I am in therapy and had heard about EMDR so this was so helpful. A video on hypnosis from you would be amazing, definitely interested in that.

I had three separate therapists try using this on me, 2 of them included the beeping systems and paddles, and the two with the beeps ended up with me having complete meltdowns in their office from being overstimulated, and claims I was fighting their help. They gave no other options to types of work we could try. No idea it existed before the first one tried it, was completely open to it, but I never found more help from it than just talking to someone (without the beeping). Even the person who only made me use the paddles I felt like I was wasting my time. If it is something that helped someone, awesome, I'm so glad you found relief somehow, but I wish it would be offered has one of MANY possible options for help, not the standard.

I had 48, 2 hour EMDR sessions for complex PTSD. It was horrific. The whole experience was exhausting and I often thought I wouldn’t make it through. After 48 sessions we came to a natural end. It made an amazing positive difference to my general life. It was effective at treating my personal flashbacks and dissociative episodes for 3 years before a high stress period in my life caused a relapse. I’m not convinced that EMDR is fool proof but, in the setting that I had, for the duration, it had significantly better results than DBT and other similar talking methods for me personally, where there was never any cessation of the PTSD symptoms. I have been training as a therapist for the last 2 years following my journey and I’ve been extremely interested in this subject as it genuinely did work for me. I’m really interested in a more deep dives of modalities as this trend of disputing the results and efficacy tracks with most of the common modalities I’ve personally looked into; and yet at the same time many people, have had positive experiences like myself. I absolutely hate the idea that EMDR (and the BTs) are just NLP in another outfit.

I many comments and questions but you eventually cover them. If I was driving while listening I would’ve started impulsively typing right away (ex: saccades). Excellent x excellent video

Really helpful - I've always had my doubts about this technique.

WOW WOW WOW!!! 🤯 I have CPSTD and EMDR literally sent me into psychosis as a teen, so this information is validating in so many ways. Thank you for stepping out and sharing, sincerely from the bottom of my heart!

I would love to see a similar video looking into the history and effectiveness of ABA (applied behavioral analysis) therapy for autistic people. Some clinicians and parents of autistic kids say it's a miracle treatment and the gold standard. Other clinicians and some autistic adults who had the therapy as kids say it's abuse and is based on gay conversation therapy. What does the research say?

I've been a patient with a emdr therapist for years. 100 percent has made no difference in my life. I would say so much therapy has made me worse mentally. There's no focus on how to move forward, just digging up old wounds & then me crying and screaming at people in my life with me bringing it up again.

As an art therapist, EMDR is really popular in my field and I feel pretty skeptical about it.

It cured me of a drowning phobia after 1 session! It definitely works. But I have a dissociative disorder so it takes a longer time for me to work through the many traumas

As a unicorn interested in random videos, I learned a lot with this one! Thank you! 🦄

i know this is a touch off topic, but was the purple hat section generated by ai or drawn by an artist? 46:17

Ok, maybe it was mentioned in the video and I just missed it, but was there a study checking if session that'd use all steps of EMDR without any kind of bilateral stimulation has the same results as fully EMDR one?

I appreciate this so much. As someone who got a tbi in San Diego and who still resides here I got to tell you it is SO HARD to avoid treatments here that aren't based from the NLP "school" of thought. When I got hit by a red light runner I was told by a healer (who is also an immigration lawyer who recommended me my injury lawyer) that I manifested getting hit by that car due to my 'unsolved mother trauma' " and I was like... If that wasn't the absolute dumbest thing that I ever heard I would take more offense to how mean it is, then she ordered me reiki for $300! 😂😂😂 like no wtf is wrong with ppl here - they be not understanding correlation isn't causation and how is that a logical correlation in the first place and how the hell did you pass the bar exam with dumb ass thinking like that? I should take that test lol cause it can't be too hard if that is what represents it. Anyways that is when I realized I should have went with my original lawyer I was eyeing but this was after I signed the contract with her recommendation with her lawyer who stated to see her good injury "doctors" (aka a chiropractor- which I was never hurt before and when I was under my moms good insurance at Stanford they were covered under her insurance so I figured it was legit 😮‍💨) who told me I had symptoms cause my "nerves were jumbled up" and long story short they were all part of this school of thought and idk they drained my money and my settlement and maybe it's cause I have Basque lineage and that's why this stuff didn't work out on me but maybe my settlement sucked cause their lawyers saw that I had no case records from a reliable source and I got no help so yeah I really appreciate this video and am excited to dive into the other stuff you posted!

This was great Micah! I've experienced EMDR as a client and actually just started a Masters of Counselling, so I found this super interesting. I found it both effective and a bit "wooey", for lack of a better word, but it was definitely on the list of trainings I was curious about maybe getting at some point... This was definitely helpful. Also I knew literally nothing about the founder, but wow, what a ride that story was :|

I used EMDR only after trying so much regular therapy, it has been the only thing that has worked on my complex PTSD. It worked amazingly!!

Thank you for this video, it was incredibly well put together and thought through. I found it very informative. I have a question regarding EMDR and it's similarities with hypnosis, which is: Are there any negative consequences from EMDR that have been experienced by therapists and their patients? Could it be considered dangerous? I'm asking as although I'm currently in a good place mentally in comparison to where I have been in the past, I have some issues I'd like to work through. I'm concerned about finding myself in a worse off place mentally if I attempt to work through my issues with the wrong treatment. For instance, as some of my issues revolve around fears of repressed memories/ dissociation, I don't want to risk going through something like hypnosis in case false memories take root and ruin what progress I have made and possibly make my life worse. If there aren't repressed memories, great! I'd prefer that obviously! But if there are repressed memories and they are continuing to affect aspects of my present life, I'd really like to work through them so I can live my life fully. For some reason, perhaps stigma born from representation in media etc, I find myself anxious about certain therapeutic techniques leaving me in a worse off position. I guess I'm trying to find out more about a safe way to come to terms with trauma as well as traumatic events I'm unsure about. I don't want to risk getting worse while trying to get better. What say you?

Thank you for this great in depth review! I also came across some studies that neurofeedback therapy can help with ptsd. Could you make a video on that topic?

Subjects are under pressure to say zero and we know that social pressure like this has a powerful effect on behaviour. Few will be able to be fully honest and risk their therapist feeling or looking bad. If they do, they will be blamed.

My husband is in therapy using . He was involved in a shooting and has Barely had any serious trauma in his life before this. It was very hard for him to even think about the situation without falling apart. I don’t know about the full science of EMDR, but from what he has described for him it’s more the ASMR effect it gives him. it creates a safe space for him to be calm enough to focus on his trauma without becoming overwhelmed.

I did a few sessions of EMDR with my shrink that was trained in it. It really did nothing so we dropped it. It really felt like BS to me.

The eye movement having any effect makes the least amount of sense to me. I really can't see any neurological pathway for that to have any effect on interrupting memory reconsolidation except for maybe distracting the patient. But at that point literally any interruption would be just as effective. No need to use deliberate eye movements. Even just bringing up a memory and then deliberately adding/removing random details to/from it will very likely result in an altered memory being reconsolidated. Which then allows for modifying the original memory, and that's the approach I personally have experimented with. Where I'll bring a memory I want gone to mind, and then inject with enough random junk that the original memory no longer has any real meaning to me since I know most of it's fake. Obviously for this to work I need to deliberately do my best to make it as difficult as possible to remember or pick out what about it is fake, but it definitely helps with messing up memories I don't want to remember anymore. Edit after watching the full video. I agree with you completely. Something else is clearly at play here, but it's dressed up into something new for the sake of selling it to therapists/clients.

I'm glad someone is saying something about EMDR. Aside from one therapist that I felt was able to work with me and I had to part ways with over schedule changes, every therapist I have been to since as basically acted like EMDR is their only tool and it doesn't seem to work for me. I don't know if I'm just holding my skepticism the whole time so it doesn't work, but I have bad Depression, Anxiety, and am "high functioning" autistic. NOT PTSD.

I was having daily full on panic attacks with significant dissociation and EMDR absolutely just stopped them in their tracks. I don't dissociatiate anymore and I can go years without a full blown panic attack. However, it really didn't help me for childhood traumatic memories, my therapist definitely applied it like a panacea. So yeah I can attest to it working for my most physiological symptoms but not for other things at all. Purely anecdotal of course

I'm a licensed psychotherapist. I took the EMDR training over the course of a week. I have to wonder how vast is the placebo effect? Some people claim wondrous results. Me - nada. I'm now working with a client who requested EMDR and she reports great results. Go figure!