When teens experience trauma, they can suffer from PTSD, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and other symptoms that influence their daily lives. Fortunately, there are tools and resources available that can help make these symptoms less severe and allow your teen to cope with past traumatic situations.
If you have been seeking treatment for your teen’s trauma, you have probably come across the term “EMDR.” EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a psychotherapy that has been shown to be effective in helping people recover from traumatic experiences.
Through EMDR, countless teens have received the help they need to move forward after going through a distressing life experience.
How EMDR works
EMDR therapy was developed with three goals in mind:
Processing past events that contribute to current problem behaviors or symptoms and forming new associations between past trauma and current beliefs and behavior
Reducing and relieving current triggers and addressing present-day symptoms, behaviors, and anxieties
Helping patients learn adaptive strategies that will help them cope with future triggers or negative events that may occur in the future.
In this way, EMDR focuses on the past, present, and future so that people can heal from previous events, handle current stressors, and feel adequately equipped to tackle challenges that may come their way.
Unlike traditional talk psychotherapy, there are eight phases to EMDR treatment:
Phase one- history taking
Therapists are able to access their patients and craft an individualized plan of treatment to address their trauma. Together, the patient and client will decide which events they want to target with EMDR treatment.
Phase two- preparation
During the phase two sessions, the therapist will give the patient some coping strategies and techniques they can use to handle any triggering events that might cause them emotional distress. This will help patients both during their sessions and outside of sessions.
Phase three- assessment
In phase three, patients will select a specific target image from a traumatic incident and describe how they currently see that image and how they would like to see that image in the future.
For instance, they might believe they are helpless when they first think of the image, and then they might want to believe they are powerful when they picture the image in the future.
Patients will have an assessment period where they will rate their positive and negative beliefs about the image on a scale of 1-7.
Phase four- desensitization
During desensitization, a therapist will prompt a patient to follow a series of eye movements and sounds until the number they say during the assessment is reduced to a 0 or a 1.
Although this is just a part of the EMDR process, it is the phase that people most commonly associate with this psychotherapy.
Phase five- installation
While the previous phase had the goal of reducing negative belief statements to a 0 or 1, this phase helps patients strengthen their positive beliefs until they are able to rate them as a 7 on a scale from 1-7.
Phase six- body scan
The therapist will gauge the patient’s physiological response to recalling the traumatic incident, moment, or image they have been targeting in previous sessions. This is a way for the therapist to double-check and make certain that the patient isn’t still harboring any negative feelings about their trauma within their body.
Phase seven- closure
At the end of each therapy session, the therapist will make sure their patient receives closure. This way, the patient doesn’t leave the therapist’s office feeling anxious or like they are in distress after processing and revisiting their traumatic experience.
The patient will practice different techniques and strategies for coping with stress, relaxing their body, and regulating their emotional state.
Phase eight- reevaluation
At the beginning of each therapy session, the therapist will re-evaluate the patient’s emotional state, treatment goals, and treatment plan to make sure that treatment is as effective as possible.
The benefits of EMDR
EMDR has been shown to help people who experience any of the following:
Anxiety
Panic attacks
Eating disorders
PTSD or trauma-related issues
Night terrors
Depression and other mood disorders
Heightened physiological responses
Drug and alcohol abuse
Whether your teen has experienced a sexual assault, physical or emotional abuse, or any other form of trauma, EMDR can help them reduce their anxiety and fear and cope with their experiences.
EMDR can help your teen learn to process and their trauma, especially if they have trouble speaking about it with others. EMDR will uncover and treat the underlying feelings and beliefs your teen has surrounding a traumatic event, allow them to reprocess this event and associated events, and shift your teen’s belief system regarding the event so that they no longer have an overwhelming emotional or physiological response to the event in the future.
If you want to help reduce the power that your teen’s trauma has over their life, you should consider EMDR.