Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

“EMDR is a bizarre and wondrous treatment and anybody who first hears about it, myself included, thinks this is pretty hokey and strange. It's something invented by Francine Shapiro who found that, if you move your eyes from side to side as you think about distressing memories, that the memories lose their power.

And because of some experiences, both with myself, but even more with the patients of mine who told me about their experiences, I took a training in it. It turned out to be incredibly helpful. Then I did what's probably the largest NIH-funded study on EMDR. And we found that, of people with adult-onset traumas, a one-time trauma as an adult, that it had the best outcome of any treatment that has been published.

What's intriguing about EMDR is both how well it works and the question is how it works and that got me into this dream stuff that I talked about earlier, and how it does not work through figuring things out and understanding things. But it activates some natural processes in the brain that's helped you to integrate these past memories.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk

“Maar voor diegenen onder ons die door het leven verwond zijn en wier littekens nog niet zijn geheeld, kan het pijnlijk en angstwekkend zijn om zich naar hun binnenste te keren. In zo'n geval is de toegang tot onze innerlijke bron van coherentie geblokkeerd. Zoiets gebeurt meestal als gevolg van een trauma waarbij de emoties zo overweldigend waren dat het emotionele brein en dus het hart niet meer functioneren zoals daarvoor. Dan zijn ze geen kompas meer, maar als een vlag in een wervelwind. Dan is er een andere manier om evenwicht te hervinden, een even verbazingwekkende als effectieve methode, die zijn oorsprong vindt in het mechanisme van de droom: de neuro-emotionele integratie door oogbewegingen.”
― David Servan-Schreiber, The Instinct to Heal: Curing Depression, Anxiety and Stress Without Drugs and Without Talk Therapy

“Those little buzzers had worked some kind of Robin Williams magic. I didn't just understand the weight of my abuse logically. I felt it, like a blade through flesh, a bone popping out of place. I felt it like a lover saying it's not going to work: sharp, immediate, and terrifying. I actually felt, with searing clarity, the horror of what happened to me -- maybe for the first time ever. I felt how tremendously sad it was that I was forced to make my parents feel loved at such a young age. I felt how courageous I must have been to endure that torture, day after day for so many years, by the people I trusted most in this world. I felt a sense of love and adoration for my childhood self that I'd never been able to summon before.

There is a difference between knowing and understanding. I had known that this wasn't my fault. EMDR unlocked the gate to the next realm, towards understanding. The difference is one between rote memorization and true learning. Between hypothesis and belief. Between prayer and faith. It seems obvious now -- how can there be love without faith?”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“During EMDR, both the protocol and the bilateral stimulation contribute to the simultaneous activation of previously disconnected elements of neural, mental, and interpersonal processes. This simultaneous activation then primes the system to achieve new levels of integration.”
― Francine Shapiro PhD EMDR

“There is no question traumatized people have irrational thoughts: "I was to blame for being so sexy." "The other guys weren't afraid - they're real men." "I should have known better than to walk down that street." It's best to treat those thoughts as cognitive flashbacks - you don't argue with them any more than you would argue with someone who keeps having visual flashbacks of a terrible accident. They are residues of traumatic incidents: thoughts they were thinking when, or shortly after, the traumas occurred that are reactivated under stressful conditions. A better way to treat them is with EMDR....”
― Bessel van der Kolk M.D., The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma

“Research had already shown that sleep, and dream sleep in particular, plays a major role in mood regulation. As the article in "Dreaming" pointed out, the eyes move rapidly back and forth in REM sleep, just as they do in EMDR. Increasing our time in REM sleep reduces depression, while the less REM sleep we get, the more likely we are to become depressed......Today we know that both deep sleep and REM sleep play important roles in how memories change over time. The sleeping brain reshapes memory by increasing the imprint of emotionally relevant information while helping irrelevant material fade away. In a series of elegant studies Stickgold and his colleagues showed that the sleeping brain can even make sense out of information whose relevance is unclear while we are awake and integrate it into the larger memory system.”
― Bessel van der Kolk M.D., The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in The Healing of Trauma

“EMDR was found to be more effective than Prozac in treating PTSD. The difference was that Prozac provided relief only while patients were taking it, whereas EMDR had lasting effects even after treatment ended.”
― Bessel van der Kolk M.D., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

“In the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, surprisingly few people showed up for traditional talk therapy. Instead, many turned to acupuncture, massage, yoga, and EMDR, which seemed to offer more effective relief.”
― Bessel van der Kolk M.D., The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma