Articles

EMDR is a structured therapy for trauma. You bring to mind a distressing memory, briefly and in a controlled way.

If someone has offered you EMDR therapy for OCD, they may still be doing something reasonable. But you should know where you are standing before you decide.

If you have PTSD and someone offers you EMDR therapy, you are being offered a treatment that is recommended by NICE, and recommended by the World Health Organisation.

Partly. And the part you can do safely is not the part you want to do.

That question is settled enough that I have written about it separately. What I want to do here is the practical version. Not "does it work" but "what actually happens, and what do I need to make it work".

You came here for a number. So here it is..

EMDR is not a NICE-recommended treatment for any eating disorder. Not for anorexia, not for bulimia, not for binge eating disorder.

EMDR is a powerful procedure, and powerful procedures have effects. Some of them are unpleasant.

Nobody warns you about the drive home. They should.

In 1987, Francine Shapiro was walking in a park when she noticed that some disturbing thoughts she had been carrying seemed to lose their charge. She noticed her eyes were moving rapidly back and forth.

No. It doesn't. That's the short answer, and if it's all you came for, you can stop reading. But it's worth understanding why the answer is no, because five years ago most therapists would have told you the opposite.