EMDR Africa Conference 2025

About EMDR

What is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is an evidence-based integrative psychotherapy approach that helps people recover from problems caused by traumatic or disturbing adverse life experiences. It is a form of therapy that focuses on reprocessing memories of these experiences. EMDR stops difficult memories causing so much distress by helping the brain to reprocess them adaptively to heal old pain and improve current mental health and wellness.

EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment that identifies and addresses experiences that have overwhelmed the brain’s natural resilience or coping capacity, thereby generating trauma symptoms and/or harmful coping strategies. Through EMDR therapy, clients are able to reprocess traumatic information until it is no longer psychologically disturbing.

How does EMDR Therapy work?​

EMDR aims to help the brain become “unstuck” and reprocess a memory so that it is no longer so intense. It also helps to desensitize the person to the emotional impact of the memory, so that they can think about the event without experiencing strong feelings.
It does this by asking the person to think about the traumatic event while they are simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation. This stimulation could be in the form of moving their eyes from side to side, listening to alternate sounds in each ear, tapping on each hand alternately or crossing the arms and tapping alternately on the chest. This alternating bilateral stimulation seems to effectively activate the adaptive processing system in the brain.

How did EMDR Therapy start?

In the late 1980s, American psychologist and educator Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., (1948-2019) was walking in a park and discovered a connection between eye movement and a decrease in persistent upsetting memories. With this personal insight, Dr Shapiro developed her work from a hypothesis to a formal therapy process. She studied this effect scientifically, and in 1989, she reported success using EMDR to treat victims of trauma. Following this initial study, many treatments were conducted, leading to EMDR Therapy now having more published treatment outcome studies than any other treatment for trauma.

What kind of problems does EMDR Therapy treat?

EMDR has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as well as other mental health problems. Although EMDR therapy is best known for treating PTSD, it can actually help with a wide range of mental health conditions in children and adults of all ages, including depression, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain, addictions, anxiety, and phobias.

EMDR Therapy is internationally recognised by the following organisations:

  • The American Psychiatric Association in 2004
  • The American Psychological Association in 2017
  • Dutch National Steering Committee Guidelines Mental Health Care in 2003
  • French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in 2004
  • The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies in 2009
  • The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (UK) in 2005
  • Israeli National Council for Mental Health - Bleich, Kutz & Shalev in 2002
  • The United Kingdom Department of Health in 2001
  • The US Department of Veterans Affairs/ Dept. of Defence in 2010
  • The World Health Organization in 2013 (for children, adolescents and adults)

EMDR Treatment Description

While each case is unique, there is a standard eight- phase approach that each clinician should follow. This includes a thorough history taking, preparing the client and helping them to develop strategies to remain calm during treatment. The therapist and client identify target memories to work on, and actively process past, present and future aspects of the memory. When processing the target memory, the client focuses on a particular aspect of the memory whilst the therapist administers bilateral stimulation (eye movements, hand taps or alternating sounds) or self-tapping. After each set of bilateral stimulation, the client briefly describes to the clinician what they have experienced. At the end of each session, the client should use the techniques that they have been taught by the clinician, to leave a session feeling calm and empowered. At the end of EMDR therapy treatment, memories that were previously distressing should no longer be problematic, and new healthy responses should be more accessible to the client.
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