Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing wikipedia. I’ve been trying this out for my ‘fear of flying’. Which, i dont have a fear of flying, I have a fear of crashing, haha.
I decided to try this therapy out because I heard a lot of good things about it from tohers that have PTSD, and other things going on emotionally. It made sense to me after reading about how it works. Our bodies get emotions locked up and we dont take the time to “reprocess” them. This means, going through whatever experience it was that you keep overthinking about and with the help of a therapist, walking through that scenario over and over again and each time your emotional response lowers from it.
The example is flying for me. Everytime I thought about flying, or saw a plane flying, I would immediately have an emotional reaction. My heartbeat would jump up for a second, and I would remember freaking out and then I would immediately stop thinking about it. All that was doing was perpetuating the problem and growing the stress inside me. After my first session (ive done 4 total so far, and last night I recently took a helicopter tour ride that went easy as pie!) a lot of that stress was out of my body and I felt amazing.
The therapist and I sat together on a zoom-like call and we started at the beginning. The EMDR works because you talk with your therapist about whatever it is you’re working through and then you have to do 60-seconds of eye movement following two dots moving back and forth like the game Pong. When doing this through the zoom-like website, you actually see the dots on the screen and the therapist watches you while you are watching a pitch-black screen with two dots moving back and forth across it.
After each one of those cycles, the therapist wasked what “level” my body reactions were at, like heartbeat, feeling hot, feeling anxiety, all while sitting in the comfort of my chair at home while the therapist was over 2,000 miles away. And then the cycle repeats. It was wildly effective.
Each time going through the flying processl starting at buying the plane ticket, boarding the plane, etc… It got easier to picture in my mind and not have a reaction to. Anything that was standing out as provoking some sort of emotional/body response, that was focused on in the next 60-second eye movement. If i was able to finally visualize walking down gangway and boarding the plane just fine without any emotional reaction, but i was getting stuck on or getting nervous about the flight crew closing the door to prepare to back away from the gate, that became the next part of the process to really focus on and continue the process until that specific part of the flying process wasn’t giving me shit anymore.
Like I said, i was able to get on a short helicopter tour last night, albeit only 15 minutes long, was still chill as fuck whereas weeks, months, or years before, i would have been a basket case. Definitely worth a shot if you are dealing with anything. And what i’ve learned, most people are dealing with something.