EMDR| Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

EMDR typically involves left-right eye movements, or auditory or tactile stimulation. It can be accomplished using either equipment or the practitioner may move her hand left to right to cause the client's eyes to move. This causes disturbing material to come forward in the client's awareness, enabling it to be resolved adaptively. For information on the scientific status of EMDR, please go to www.emdr.com.

Dr Paulsen moderates an internet forum about EMDR for the EMDR Institute. Go to www.behavior.net and click on EMDR to read the forum and its archives for more information. Dr Paulsen is a senior practitioner of EMDR and is an EMDR Institute facilitator and advanced specialty workshop instructor. She is also an EMDR International Association Certified Consultant and Workshop Instructor. Go to www.emdria.org for names of certified EMDR consultants.

Dr Paulsen was the invited Master Series Lecturer at the 2004 EMDRIA Conference in Montreal. She is known for having developed the first protocol for the use of EMDR with highly dissociative individuals, publishing cautions about EMDR with dissociation, and for first urging the screening of every client for dissociation before administering EMDR. Those recommendations were adopted in 1992 by the EMDR Institute.

Dr Paulsen is also experienced with the unique and exciting Early Trauma Protocol developed by Katie O'Shea, and presented by O'Shea and Paulsen at the Dallas EMDRIA in 2007.

EMDR involves the following steps, if people are not dissociative. 1) Client History, 2) Preparation (when indicating, strenghtening a safe sense, resourcing the client and ruling out red flags contraindicating proceding EMDR), 3) Assessment of the memory, image, negative belief about the self, the positive belief one wishes to hold instead (and how valid it seems at the outset), the emotion and the body sense of the memory, and the level of disturbance at the outset. 4) Desensitization with bilateral stimulation, whether eye movements, auditory or tactile stimulation is chosen by the client, 5) Installation of the desired positive cognition when it is ready to be received and strengthened, 6) closure and 7) follow up. See "looking through the eyes" for the steps for more dissociative individuals.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) was originated by Dr Francine Shapiro. EMDR has been established by extensive scientific and clinical research as an effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD). It has application beyond PTSD to other life experiences which had a negative learning outcome. It can be used to help establish self esteem, confidence, and to release attachments to out of date loyalties and unresolved baggage.