EMDR for anxiety
When someone becomes anxious, this usually takes place at a time when danger is imminent. In certain situations, fear is a natural response to indicate that danger is imminent. When the danger is gone, the feelings of fear also disappear. This is not true for everyone. There are people who regularly have an anxiety attack, with sometimes severe reactions. This can be an anxiety attack out of the blue, but also in very specific situations. Suffering from fears and possibly phobias is not normal and sometimes EMDR can help with anxiety.
What can cause anxiety?
Anxiety without an apparent reason does not just happen. In most cases, extreme anxiety attacks are caused by an underlying trauma. Sometimes the anxiety attacks occur immediately in the period after the traumatic event and sometimes it happens very slowly and the fear remains dormant. This is often the case if, for example, you have experienced something in the past that you have not sufficiently processed. It may be that you cannot even immediately identify the cause. This is often the case if the fear arose after a trauma.
How does fear affect your daily life?
People with an anxiety disorder can suffer greatly from the effects of the disorder in everyday life. Those who have nightmares because of their fears suffer from insomnia and daytime concentration problems. They may even be afraid to sleep alone. Anxiety can turn into a panic attack in certain situations. It is precisely these situations that you want to avoid. This does mean that you will no longer go to certain locations, often busy places such as a supermarket, the market or a restaurant. As a result, the fear can lead to loneliness and social isolation. Sometimes working or going to school is no longer possible, just because you are afraid of a panic attack. It is then very wise to consider EMDR for anxiety.
What is EMDR for anxiety?
EMDR is not an alternative therapy, but an official therapy that many therapists and psychologists have trained for and apply in their practice. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and basically involves distracting from the recall of a traumatic experience and in this way overloading the working memory. EMDR is still a relatively young therapy and was discovered and developed in 1989 by an American psychologist. Various types of therapy are available for fears. Is a fear clearly related to a traumatic experience? Then EMDR is a proven therapy that can be used.
How does EMDR work for anxiety?
The reason why EMDR works well for anxiety following a trauma is that you go back to the moment of the trauma. Not only do you visualise the image in your mind, also the thoughts and feelings you had at the time surface again. This can be quite confronting, but it is necessary to achieve results. As soon as the therapist asks you to load the trauma into your working memory, i.e. to recall it, you are distracted by a hand gesture or a sound. This distraction is a form of overload for the working memory, so that at a certain moment you will feel less emotion when thinking back to the traumatic moment. Recalling the memory and the distraction takes place several times during the treatment. After a while you will notice that it becomes easier to think back to the traumatic moment and the memory may even fade or be replaced by other thoughts. This is a sign that you have finally been able to give the trauma a place and there is a good chance that your anxiety attacks have disappeared.
Does EMDR help anyone with an anxiety disorder?
EMDR is a therapy specifically designed for trauma treatment. If your anxiety disorder was caused by a trauma, EMDR is certainly something you should consider. Of course, it also depends on the person to what extent EMDR produces results. Certain fears and phobias that cannot be traced back to a trauma will not always be suitable for treatment with EMDR. The therapist will then suggest a different treatment.
The EMDR tools of Pyslaris
The mental health care sector also has to move with the times and modern tools can be very helpful in this respect. EMDR is often used as official therapy in the mental health care sector and digital techniques make it easier. Psylaris makes EMDR easier for the practitioner and more accessible for the patient with an anxiety disorder. With EMDR-remote patients are treated remotely via a laptop or PC, whereby the therapist has many digital opportunities to use distraction techniques. With Psylaris Care you make use of virtual reality goggles to treat the patient. This allows the patient to take the VR goggles home and undergo even more intensive treatment.
Exposure in virtual reality
The goal of Psylaris is to support therapists even better with sufficient EMDR techniques and tools. EMDR in virtual reality is the latest development. The Psylaris Care consists of virtual reality (VR) glasses that can be connected to various modules. Initially, the VR glasses are used in the treatment room and ensure that the patient enters a virtual environment. This ensures an intensive treatment, making a shorter course of treatment necessary. If the patient is ready, the glasses can be given to him or her for use at home, which means that treatment can also take place at home. There are various modules available for the VR glasses. Besides the EMDR module, there is also a module for the treatment of fear, phobia and stress. Psylaris continues to develop, so that more modules will be released in the near future for an even wider range of treatment.