EMDR : The Breakthrough Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma

"A well-written, fascinating book that is a delight to read. With the development of EMDR, Francine Shapiro has made a profound contribution to psychotherapy and to our knowledge of wisdom and healing."
-- David A. Console, M.D., director of the Trauma Recovery Program, The Menninger Clinic

Hailed as the most important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades, EMDR has successfully treated complex psychological illnesses and problems--from depression, phobias and recurrent nightmares to post-traumatic stress disorder and long-standing grief--in more than one million sufferers world wide with a rapidity that almost defies belief. In this remarkable new book, Dr. Francine Shapiro, the originator and developer of EMDR, explains how she created her groundbreaking therapy--Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), how it works, and how it can help those who feel stuck in negative reactions and behaviors.

The story of EMDR began one day when Shapiro was strolling through a park. As disturbing thoughts flashed through her mind, she moved her eyes from side to side and noticed that her negative feelings immediately dissipated. Building on this finding, she spent the next decade creating a breakthrough therapy that has been acclaimed by clinicians, lauded by crisis intervention organizations, and endorsed by academicians. As one of the most extensively researched and supported methods for treating trauma, EMDR is now practiced around the world.

Today there are more than 20,000 trained EMDR therapists in the United States alone. To illustrate the astounding transformations made possible by EMDR therapy, Dr. Shapiro offers here some of the many compelling case studies to emerge from their work. In these flashbacks, who is able to pull his life together; a young boy, plagued with nightmares after gaining consciousness in the middle of surgery, who begins to sleep peacefully; a rape victim, paralyzed by her fear of leaving the house, who is able to put her trauma behind her; and many more.

EMDR's benefits are not limited to the effects of obvious trauma. This therapy has also been used extensively for those who suffer form the aftereffects of what Dr. Shapiro calls "small t" trauma, the more common, often unsuspected, disturbing past experiences that are also responsible for present debilitating behaviors, anxiety, and stress.

Just as Prozac has changed the face of psychotherapy, EMDR is radically altering psychiatrists' ideas about how the mind works and how the psyche heals. From Oklahoma City to Bosnia, in therapists' offices across the land, EMDR is offering hope, at last, for the millions who suffer.

"EMDR is the most revolutionary important method to emerge in psychotherapy in decades."
--Herbert Fensterheim, Ph.D., Cornell University, author of Don't Say Yes When You Want to Say No