Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tastysandwich | Hacker News Reader

Here's something that's fascinating.

A type of therapy that's become more popular recently is called Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR).

You lie down, while the therapist asks you to follow their index finger with your eyes as they move it back and forth about 12 inches in front of you. So it's recreating those rapid eye movements. At the same time, you're asked to recall a traumatic event, bringing back the images, any sounds, thoughts, in detail.

This is a fairly new form of therapy, with both strong supporters and critics. But a lot of evidence points to the fact that, for whatever reason, this technique allows people to more safely access their trauma, process it, and take control of their thoughts.

I first read about in this book The Body Keeps The Score (by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD), which by the way is absolutely fascinating. In a nutshell it's about trauma. But talks about different types of trauma, the effects it has on your brain, childhood vs adult trauma, treatments, his experience treating it, etc.

It's an exciting area of study and there's evidently something about REM (Rapid Eye Movement) and processing memories/trauma.

It doesn't just have to be the eye movements. They'll also use little tappers or paddles that sit in your hand and vibrate alternately. They also have ones with sound that do something similar. For me, the vibrating paddles plus the sound works best, but they all work.

It's fascinating.

This reminds me of a thing I do when I prepare for a cold shower. I rhythmically start walking in place. Just moving my weight from one foot to the other at a constant pace. At the same time, I breathe in and out at the same pace.

I've noticed this helps me take the shock of the cold water so much better. I feel like it helps my emotional mind latch onto a simple task. It's like when you're air drumming and you nail all of the parts in a song and you feel great because there's something so satisfying about your mind predicting an outcome and then that our coming happening rhythmically. I feel it's the same but on a simpler scale when doing my steps and breathing.

Holy shit, I do the same thing except I’m sort of running in place. Hahaha we’re all the same.

Probably same reason soldiers march. It's a collective dance-like experience.

> They'll also use little tappers or paddles that sit in your hand and vibrate alternately.

Could you point to a source on this? Genuinely curious to see what these items look like, I searched but no relevant results.

They look like this: https://www.healthyplace.com/sites/default/files/uploads/201...

There are some that let you hook up headphones as well. It's all about bilateral stimulation and some people get it better through touch as opposed to visually. From the APA:

"During EMDR therapy, clinical observations suggest that an accelerated learning process is stimulated by EMDR’s standardized procedures, which incorporate the use of eye movements and other forms of rhythmic left-right (bilateral) stimulation (e.g., tones or taps). While clients briefly focus on the trauma memory and simultaneously experience bilateral stimulation (BLS), the vividness and emotion of the memory are reduced."

https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/treatments/eye-movement-r...

Thank you!

Second "The Body Keeps The Score" book! Not only it helped to think about my own past and current behaviors, but also grew loads of empathy towards other people - realizing how much shit some of us go through during their lives.

Third the "Body Keeps the Score". The concept of left hand writing, and speaking to your inner child is fascinating (and was coined by the author)

Janina Fisher extends the concept of plurality focused communication in her book really well too, which is a modified version of IFS tweaked with empirical evidence over the years. TBKTS is really good but the anecdotes can be retraumatizing for many, so I just recommend "Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors" as a good starter.

Works always from PTSD through DID, which is a great range! :D

It's the same hypnotherapy thing using a swinging watch... with rebranding for credibility.

EMDR has nothing to do with REM or eye movement (alone).

The idea is that you think about a very emotional event. While you think about this you will get little tasks (for example to move your eyes). Because your brain is now busy with the tasks it also resets the extreme emotional reaction of the event you were thinking about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com