Emotional Healing at Warp Speed: The Power of EMDR - Hardcover

Grand, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0609607464 ISBN 13: 9780609607466

Publisher: Harmony, 2001

Synopsis

Emotional Healing at Warp Speed provides a popular introduction to a miraculous new psychotherapeutic method called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). In these pages psychotherapist David Grand, Ph.D., describes his own first encounter with EMDR, then recounts the dramatic results of bringing this new therapy into the lives of his patients. By alternately stimulating the left and right sides of the brain to clear psychological blocks and resolve trauma, EMDR helped Grand’s patients put the pieces of their emotionally shattered lives back together with a speed that exceeded his wildest dreams.

Grand’s use of EMDR has helped people from all walks of life, from railroad engineers reliving the nightmare of death on the tracks to mothers of children killed on the mean streets of America’s inner cities, from bomb victims in Belfast and Oklahoma City to Arabs and Israelis traumatized by decades of hatred and violence. His account of this work inspires and touches the reader’s heart as it reveals the healing power of a process that works as swiftly as thought itself.

Grand takes EMDR–developed by Francine Shapiro, M.D., only fourteen years ago–far beyond its initial use in healing trauma. In addition to turbo- charging breakthroughs in psychotherapy, Grand uses EMDR to clear away blocks to performance and creativity. Remarkable examples show athletes, actors, musicians, and artists improving their performance, and a self-use chapter describes practical ways readers can apply this remarkable method to resolve fear of public speaking, enhance creativity, enjoy deeper, more restful sleep, resolve stress and anxiety, and much more.

About this title

About the Author

David Grand, Ph.D., a practicing psychotherapist since 1979, has changed the lives of thousands of men and women. His breakthrough work has been profiled internationally through such media as NBC, CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Grand lectures on EMDR around the world. He lives on Long Island, New York.

From the Back Cover

“Brain-imaging studies in the Amen Clinics have shown that EDMR can actually heal brain function after trauma. I highly recommend Dr. David Grand’s new book on this subject. Unlike most books on psychology, it is beautifully and passionately written and easy to read. All therapists and anyone who has suffered emotional trauma (and those who love them) should read this book.”
-- Daniel G. Amen, M.D., psychiatrist and author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life

“In this eloquent book, David Grand masterfully demonstrates both the technique and the theory of one of the most powerful new tools for psychotherapeutic treatment. While previous books on EMDR have tended to focus on pragmatics, Grand offers hope for those who suffer unremitting psychic pain or who are undergoing agonizingly slow recovery from major trauma. His dazzling stories of patient recovery are exciting to read. This book lies at the cutting edge of modern treatment for the mind.”
-- Andrew Solomon, author of Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression and New York Times contributing writer

“Dr. David Grand helps people heal from trauma and clear away negative patterns using simple steps to focus, clarify their perceptions, identify, and more important, release creative blocks. This book provides valuable insights into a powerful new tool for helping people to cut through mental clutter and learn to listen to their own inner wisdom.”
-- Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr., coauthor of Journey to Justice

“Dr. Grand’s successful use of the remarkable new technique, EMDR, to help athletes, actors, and musicians enhance performance and creativity extends the boundaries of performing art. I highly recommend it.”
-- Terrie Williams, president of the Terrie Williams Agency and author of The Personal Touch and Stay Strong: Simple Life Lessons for Teens

“I offered Dr. David Grand’s techniques to my voice, dialect, and acting students with astounding results. I believe ‘The Grand System’ will someday be as celebrated in the field of performance theory as ‘The Stanislavski System’ is today.”
-- Linda Brennan, chair, Voice & Speech Department, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts

From the Inside Flap

<b>Emotional Healing at Warp Speed</b> provides a popular introduction to a miraculous new psychotherapeutic method called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). In these pages psychotherapist David Grand, Ph.D., describes his own first encounter with EMDR, then recounts the dramatic results of bringing this new therapy into the lives of his patients. By alternately stimulating the left and right sides of the brain to clear psychological blocks and resolve trauma, EMDR helped Grand’s patients put the pieces of their emotionally shattered lives back together with a speed that exceeded his wildest dreams.<br><br>Grand’s use of EMDR has helped people from all walks of life, from railroad engineers reliving the nightmare of death on the tracks to mothers of children killed on the mean streets of America’s inner cities, from bomb victims in Belfast and Oklahoma City to Arabs and Israelis traumatized by decades of hatred and violence. His account of this work inspires and touches the reader’s heart as it reveals the healing power of a process that works as swiftly as thought itself.<br><br>Grand takes EMDR–developed by Francine Shapiro, M.D., only fourteen years ago–far beyond its initial use in healing trauma. In addition to turbo- charging breakthroughs in psychotherapy, Grand uses EMDR to clear away blocks to performance and creativity. Remarkable examples show athletes, actors, musicians, and artists improving their performance, and a self-use chapter describes practical ways readers can apply this remarkable method to resolve fear of public speaking, enhance creativity, enjoy deeper, more restful sleep, resolve stress and anxiety, and much more.

Reviews

Crediting Francine Shapiro with originating the technique just 13 years ago, Long Island psychotherapist Grand explains eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy for a popular audience. With 40,000 trained practitioners, this recent addition to the therapeutic arsenal has tremendous potential, he argues, for healing the effects of trauma, relieving depression, enhancing creativity and performance and improving studying and test taking. Focusing on a "target image" associated with a traumatic memory, the patient is led through a step-by-step process of recalling scenes, emotions and physical sensations while receiving "bilateral stimulation" through guided eye movements, alternating sounds in headphones or alternately receiving squeezes, massaging rubs or taps on the left and right sides of the body. According to Grand, one-time traumas (car accidents, bombings, hurricanes) can be released in one session, even in a few minutes, while deeper disturbances (repeated child abuse, war experiences) may take longer and may involve additional methods of therapy. He provides compelling anecdotal evidence of EMDR's effectiveness with train engineers traumatized by suicides and accidents on the tracks; survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing and Florida's Hurricane Andrew; mothers of slain children in Brooklyn; residents of Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Israel and the occupied territories; survivors of child abuse; and professional actors and athletes. While many readers may still find it doubtful that any one therapy could work on all patients, especially in such rapid time, Grand presents an intriguing case for his approach. (Aug. 21)Forecast: The claim of "warp speed" healing will attract deserved media scrutiny, while Grand's passion for his subject will help sell the book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The body-mind therapy called EMDR (eye movement desensitization reprocessing), invented less than 15 years ago by Francine Shapiro, is a controversial but inarguably effective way of treating psychological trauma. Using the unlikely procedure of guiding the eye through specific movements, the EMDR therapist creates a trancelike state in the client, who then vividly relives events that created lasting difficulties. In this reliving, the mind "reprocesses" the material, permitting the client to be released from its power. Practitioners and clients report that often just a few sessions--indeed, as few as one--relieve deep-rooted problems that have been resistant to more conventional therapies. (Such quick effectiveness is the source of the controversy about the therapy; critics maintain it can't possibly have such dramatic results.) Grand's engagingly written book documents his experiences as an EMDR specialist who has used the technique with clients as diverse as Oklahoma City bombing victims and artists seeking to unblock their creativity. An intriguing presentation of a promising new therapy. Patricia Monaghan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

According to psychotherapist Grand, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a body/mind therapy that stimulates the brain and physiological network through left-right eye movements, is an effective way to heal emotional scars. Grand carefully outlines the steps necessary to practicing EMDR properly and includes limitations regarding self-use. Not only can EMDR help maximize athletic performance and foster artistic creativity, he contends, but it can also mend traumas stemming from exposure to hurricanes, bombings, and war. Real-life examples of successful EMDR patients are engaging. Although it takes awhile to grasp the author's point, it is worth the wait: as we come to honor the interconnectedness of sensory memory and body experience in ourselves, we will move from a place of healing our psychic traumas to a better place that of inner crisis prevention at the outset. Unusual and thought-provoking, this is recommended for large mental health collections of public libraries. Lisa Liquori, Syracuse, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

I am Introduced to EMDR

I went without extraordinary expectations. My friend Uri Bergmann, like me a psychotherapist but more experimental than I (he was into hypnosis and pain management), had learned of a new therapeutic method called EMDR--Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. He had been impressed with the results he had achieved with it, particularly in one case, and now he wanted to learn more. He asked if I would accompany him to the Loew's Hotel on New York's Lexington Avenue for a weekend Level I training session. I somewhat reluctantly agreed.

The year was 1993. I was forty years old. My life was about to change forever.

There were about eighty of us in a conference room--several, I found out later, from abroad--all of us staring with some wonder at the striking, five-foot-eleven, dynamic, fortyish woman named Francine Shapiro who talked with confidence and clarity about the new form of psychotherapy she had developed.

I confess I didn't immediately grasp most of it. Her ideas were derived from cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy (put simplistically, what you feel comes from what you think), whereas I, trained as a psychoanalyst, believed in the influence of early life experiences in the formation of personality, conflict, and self. Her talk was highly technical, filled with words and phrases I would come to integrate only later, but I was impressed by her ardor and by the fluidity of both her words and her movements. Throughout the day, she seemed comfortable and self-assured teaching her new method.

We broke for lunch. I remember telling Uri that I was neither impressed nor unimpressed. Clearly the woman was not a wacko, and while I found it difficult to imagine myself using the approach with my own patients, I did not put down his interest. "Stick around for the experiential this afternoon," he said, though it had not occurred to me to leave.

After lunch Dr. Shapiro lectured for another hour. (Now I was growing restive.) We took a break, and finally the chairs in the room were rearranged, and manuals in hand, we broke into groups of three--"patient," "therapist," and "observer"--to begin what is known as the practicum, the hands-on session. Watching over us was a facilitator, someone already versed in EMDR practice, to guide our efforts and correct our mistakes.

Though doing the practicum with a friend is discouraged, Uri and I fortunately managed to stay together, perhaps anticipating the assignment of the third member of our group, a man in need of considerable support, who was so patently nervous that his pencil for note-taking trembled visibly in his hands. Uri and I exchanged glances, concerned with how he would perform.

Well, to begin with, he was by default the therapist, for although we were to switch roles after forty-five minutes, it fell out that for the first go-round I would be his patient and Uri the observer. Soon the facilitator arrived to give us our initial instructions. A sixtyish gentleman from Southern California with a laid-back teaching approach. I was feeling shaky. Just my luck, I thought. A vulnerable therapist and a laissez-faire facilitator. Too, the room was noisy and the chairs uncomfortable. Not exactly an ideal environment or an atmosphere conducive to optimal learning. And proof that we do not choose the spot for our epiphanies.

The first step in EMDR therapy is to have the therapist guide the patient to selecting a target--some troubling aspect of the past or present that the patient wants to rework. A traumatic event--such as a severe accident or the death of a loved one--is a target; so is something ostensibly far less dramatic, like an upsetting memory or a recurrent dream that has replayed in the mind for many years.

The target I chose is known in psychoanalytic terms as a screen memory, something that in and of itself does not seem particularly significant but that, like a dream, disguises deeper, more significant material lying underneath.

In this memory, I must be age four or five. It is afternoon. My mother is in the hospital, though I don't know why, and I am being looked after not by Mrs. Kenneth, my usual baby-sitter, a kindly elderly women whom I have grown to love and trust, nor by my grandmother, to whom I am attached, but by a strange woman who wears a white uniform with white harlequin glasses and an expression of hostility and disapproval. The grassy area behind our three-story apartment building in Fresh Meadows, Queens, New York, slopes gently upward. She is at the top, and I am at the bottom, innocently wanting to go to a playground nearby. The strange woman is not only hostile to my request but somehow gives me the impression that I am being "bad" for feeling lonely. I am scared of her, vulnerable, and confused. I wish my mother were home.

The memory had remained remarkably vivid in its details, and I described it without faltering. Uri looked at me with his usual analytic contemplation; meanwhile, the unkempt therapist was staring blankly at the manual, attempting to review the instructions.

"What's the negative belief about you that goes with the memory?" he mechanically read aloud. As I'll explain more fully in Chapter 2, negative cognition refers to an irrational thought ("I'm worthless," or "I'm stupid") rather than a reality-based one ("It's in the past and I'm safe now"). "It's my fault," I replied.

After the protocol was set (and we will discuss its details in Chapter 2), the therapist began by forgetting the most obvious features of the process. "Aren't you supposed to use hand movements?" Uri asked him. "Isn't the patient supposed to be following those movements with his eyes?"

Yes. The therapist had forgotten. Now the facilitator arrived and demonstrated the correct technique. Between us, Uri and I worked out the hand movements; Uri had to patiently explain to the therapist what his next moves should be and encourage him to keep going. But whatever focus I had mustered was long gone. I remember feeling frustrated, disgusted, resentful, and annoyed.

We began again. Once more I summoned up the target memory, but this time I followed the therapist's hand movement with my eyes. Left right . . . left right . . . left right . . . All of a sudden--bang!--a sensation appeared out of nowhere.

I felt something wrapped around my neck! The grip was tightening, and I gasped for air. I was choking!

Quite literally, although I was sitting straight in my chair, I felt my back pinned against a wall. Adrenaline pumped through my system, and my chest was heaving. I was panting as though I had been running for miles. ("Your nostrils were flaring like a racehorse," Uri later told me.)

Except for the terror, the rest was confusion. What or who was choking me? Was this a birth memory of the umbilical cord that almost strangled me? Suddenly I saw a blurry face with expressionless eyes. Was it my sister or the bully next door with hands around my throat? I felt as if I were facing death!

The scene was as vivid as a flashback in a movie; both the sights and the physical sensations were palpable. I was able to be both inside the memory and outside it, participant and observer. For anyone, it would have been a remarkable experience. For me, an experienced therapist, it was mind-blowing.

As the image began to fade, I heard music, faint at first but then growing clearer: Jackson Browne's "Doctor My Eyes."

Doctor, my eyes
Cannot see the sky.
Is this the prize
For having learned how not to cry?

When the flashback ended, it was immediately followed by another, then another, then another. Five memories in all, each equally vivid, equally powerful.

I'm walking into the high school cafeteria. Two tough kids, far bigger than I, grab me without warning, push me back against a pole, and hold my arms behind it. They say nothing, they are laughing as they try to terrorize me, but I am trapped and helpless. The worst part is that other schoolmates pass by, either not caring or pretending not to see what's happening. It reminds me of not being protected from the bullies I encountered in kindergarten or first grade. Finally I am able to wriggle my arms free and break away. I run over to my usual table and sit down. My friends notice nothing. I am alone. As the memory fades, I quickly jump to another.

I'm in the park with a friend, both of us nine years old. My family has just moved into the neighborhood. (We have moved from Fresh Meadows, a predominantly Jewish middle-class enclave, to Elmhurst, more blue collar, where Jews are a rarity.) Once again, I'm menaced by older, bigger boys who demand to know if I've been baptized. I don't answer, out of defiance more than fear. They hold my friend and me, pinning our arms behind us, and splash filthy puddle water on our heads and faces. I look at one of them squarely in the eye and ask why they have to do this to us. He is briefly taken aback by my trying to reason with him, but moments later they continue splashing us with dirty water. Some adults are in the park and ignore the incident, pretending nothing is happening. The scene ends and abruptly the next begins.

I'm in my early twenties, traveling by bus along a winding road in Martinique. It's an old, top-heavy bus, and the driver swerves back and forth, right and left, to avoid a wildly driven car. The bus goes out of control. There is absolute silence for what feels like ten seconds, all of us knowing what is about to happen. The bus turns over into a ditch. It is now filled with screams, though not my own. During the split second when my head is catapulted to the metal ceiling, the words That's it flash through my mind. I believe I have experienced the final moments of my life. As the image fades into the darkness, the next one pops up.

I'm nineteen, a camp counselor in Maine. I decide to try snorkeling, so I put on borrowed gear and jump o...

Edition details

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0609607464
• ISBN 13: 9780609607466
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288