Emdr Quotes

In contrast, EMDR, as well as the treatments discussed in subsequent chapters—internal family systems, yoga, neurofeedback, psychomotor therapy, and theater—focus not only on regulating the intense memories activated by trauma but also on restoring a sense of agency, engagement, and commitment through ownership of body and mind.

Changing the memories that form the way we see ourselves also changes the way we view others. Therefore, our relationships, job performance, what we are willing to do or are able to resist, all move in a positive direction.

During EMDR, I was able to conjure two separate, simultaneous versions of myself—the child version and the present version. I was able to feel child Stephanie’s emotions and my own. I was able to comfort her with my present wisdom. I was able to simultaneously be the one giving love and the one receiving it.

EMDR

Il ricordo di un trauma è sfocato per definizione. L’ago salta sul vinile, le prime tre battute della canzone sono perdute. Puoi solo riempirle a orecchio. Anche con i metodi più comuni per riportare in superficie le cose più nascoste, come la tecnica EMDR che ha preso il posto dell’ipnosi, non ti consegnano mai il passato sotto forma di immagini in movimento. Il trauma è un livido, una parte del tuo cervello annerita per sempre, e per questo tu non vai a stuzzicarlo con un dito. Qualcosa ti dice: lascia stare. E se poi tu decidi di provarci? Di non lasciare stare? Non le rivedi, certe cose. Non è come guardare una Polaroid. Tu le rivivi.

Dr. Spencer Eth, who ran the psychiatry department at the now-defunct St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, was curious where survivors had turned for help, and early in 2002, together with some medical students, he conducted a survey of 225 people who had escaped from the Twin Towers. Asked what had been most helpful in overcoming the effects of their experience, the survivors credited acupuncture, massage, yoga, and EMDR, in that order.1 Among rescue workers, massages were particularly popular.

whose memories were merely blunted, not integrated as an event that happened in the past, and still caused considerable anxiety—those who received EMDR no longer experienced the distinct imprints of the trauma: It had become a story of a terrible event that had happened a long time ago.

As with any field, if something does not fit into the current understanding of how things work, it raises eyebrows, hackles or both.

The dominant theory is that the original memory is accessed, connections changed and then stored with these new modifications in a neurobiological process called “reconsolidation.

Adults who were abused or neglected as children will often blame themselves. This can lead to persistent feelings of guilt and shame. EMDR therapist Dr. Jim Knipe proposes that this self-blame is a direct link to childhood logic—children will develop a fantasy that they are bad kids relying upon good parents to avoid confronting the terrifying reality that they are good kids relying upon bad parents.

EMDR is a bizarre and wondrous treatment and anybody who first hears about it, myself included, thinks this is pretty hokey and strange. It's something invented by Francine Shapiro who found that, if you move your eyes from side to side as you think about distressing memories, that the memories lose their power. And because of some experiences, both with myself, but even more with the patients of mine who told me about their experiences, I took a training in it. It turned out to be incredibly helpful. Then I did what's probably the largest NIH-funded study on EMDR. And we found that, of people with adult-onset traumas, a one-time trauma as an adult, that it had the best outcome of any treatment that has been published. What's intriguing about EMDR is both how well it works and the question is how it works and that got me into this dream stuff that I talked about earlier, and how it does not work through figuring things out and understanding things. But it activates some natural processes in the brain that's helped you to integrate these past memories.

How much respect I have for each person’s system knowing what will support healing. Not everyone responds to the process of going directly into the body toward the root of implicit memory. For some, being consistently in the presence of a caring other provides disconfirmation for attachment losses. For others, sand tray or art may be the resonant support, or EMDR or Somatic Experiencing. So many modalities have emerged in recent years, primarily in response to our expanded understanding of the neuroscience of wounding and healing. Each way of working has value and may become even more supportive of our people if it rests on the practice of leading, following and responding. In this way we are able to cultivate a safe space for the fluid emergence of any specific protocol.

In The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk writes about a form of therapy called EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a strange process reminiscent of hypnosis, where a patient revisits past traumas while moving their eyes left and right. It seemed too simple, almost hokey, but van der Kolk passionately sang its praises. He told the story of a patient who came out of a single forty-five-minute session of EMDR, looked at him, and said that “he’d found dealing with me so unpleasant that he would never refer a patient to me. Otherwise, he remarked, the EMDR session had resolved the matter of his father’s abuse.” Resolved! Here was a form of therapy, van der Kolk said, that could help “even if the patient and the therapist do not have a trusting relationship.” Then again, he said that EMDR was far more effective for adult-onset trauma, and it cured only 9 percent of childhood trauma survivors.

ON SOME DAYS, this is all that I do: wake up, make coffee, believe it will get better, go to EMDR, believe it won’t get better, walk downtown on West End Avenue afterward, thrusting my fists deep into the pockets of my coat, crying.

She is trained to do EMDR, and she follows the protocol exactly. I try to delay by asking questions or making witty comments, but she won’t have it.

I’d like our therapy to be penicillin. And I know that it’s insulin.

Frustration and hurt are easy. Why is anger so hard?

A trauma can be successfully processed only if all those brain structures are kept online. In Stan’s case, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) allowed him to access his memories of the accident without being overwhelmed by them. When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to the past.

EMDR was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in 1987. She discovered that when she was walking through the woods, her upsetting thoughts dissipated when she moved her eyes back and forth, scanning the path around her. She then conducted studies where she waved a finger in front of patients’ faces, directing their gazes left and right, while asking them to revisit their most harrowing traumas. She reported that subjects who received EMDR therapy had “significant decreases in ratings of subjective distress and significant increases in ratings of confidence in a positive belief.” EMDR therapy is referred to as “processing,” and in EMDR circles, specialists stress that processing does not mean talking. Talking gives us knowledge about why we are the way we are, but that knowledge isn’t enough. Processing, on the other hand, allows us to truly come to terms with our trauma and resolve it—to rewrite the memories in our brains with a healthier narrative. This seemed abstract to me, and I didn’t really know what it meant. But it sure sounded good.

İçimizdeki çocuğun ruh hâli, büyüdüğümüz evin ruhuna benzer. Çocukken, oradaki havayı solur, içimize alır, içselleştiririz.

Çocuk, babayı anneden öğrenir.

EMDR loosens up something in the mind/brain that gives people rapid access to loosely associated memories and images from their past. This seems to help them put the traumatic experience into a larger context or perspective.

EMDR is a powerful treatment for stuck traumatic memories, but it doesn’t necessarily resolve the effects of the betrayal and abandonment that accompany physical or sexual abuse in childhood. Eight weeks of therapy of any kind is rarely sufficient to resolve the legacy of long-standing trauma.

Dreams keep replaying, recombining, and reintegrating pieces of old memories for months and even years.14 They constantly update the subterranean realities that determine what our waking minds pay attention to. And perhaps most relevant to EMDR, in REM sleep we activate more distant associations than in either non-REM sleep or the normal waking state.

In my experience, physically reexperiencing the past in the present and then reworking it in a safe and supportive “container” can be powerful enough to create new, supplemental memories: simulated experiences of growing up in an attuned, affectionate setting where you are protected from harm. Structures do not erase bad memories, or even neutralize them the way EMDR does.

EMDR was developed by psychologist Francine Shapiro in 1987. She discovered that when she was walking through the woods, her upsetting thoughts dissipated when she moved her eyes back and forth, scanning the path around her. She then conducted studies where she waved a finger in front of patients’ faces, directing their gazes left and right, while asking them to revisit their most harrowing traumas. She reported that subjects who received EMDR therapy had “significant decreases in ratings of subjective distress and significant increases in ratings of confidence in a positive belief.”[1]

Nobody is exactly sure why EMDR works, which makes it easy to discredit. One theory is that EMDR mimics the way the brain processes memories during REM sleep. Other research suggests that these eye movements tax our short-term memory, dimming the painful vibrancy of past experiences and making them easier to revisit with a sense of clarity. Whether or not either of these theories is true, many studies keep showing real results: Somehow, this weird process is surprisingly effective in helping patients recover from trauma. In the years since Shapiro invented EMDR, technology has improved beyond the finger-waving. There are now EMDR light units that kind of look like the scrolling LED light-up signs advertising beer at corner stores. And for people like me—people who feel more comfortable keeping their eyes closed throughout the EMDR process—there are now little machines that hook up to vibrating bullets that you hold in your hands, with headphones that play sounds in one ear, then the other.

There is a difference between knowing and understanding. I had known that this wasn’t my fault. EMDR unlocked the gate to the next realm, toward understanding. The difference is one between rote memorization and true learning. Between hypothesis and belief. Between prayer and faith. It seems obvious now—how can there be love without faith?

EMPowerplus,

I also discovered that other forms of side-to-side movement besides the eyes could be effective. Therapists could also use taps alternating from hand to hand or tones played from one ear to the other.

At this point, there is enough research for me to believe that both are true. So, if I had to do it over again, I’d simply call it “Reprocessing Therapy.” But now Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing—more commonly called EMDR—is known worldwide, so it’s too late for a name change.

However, today more than 20 scientifically controlled studies of EMDR have proven its effectiveness in the treatment of traumatic and other disturbing life experiences.

begin a daily use of the self-control techniques you’ve already learned. Remember to practice the Safe/Calm Place technique every day to strengthen it, so when you feel disturbed you can bring back the positive feelings. If you didn’t find your mind moving into something negative, use the bilateral thigh tapping or Butterfly Hug to increase the positive emotions and sensations. You can also use the Breathing Shift technique to calm yourself when you’re feeling stressed, and the Cartoon Character technique to deal with negative self-talk. Or use the Water Hose or Wet Eraser to help deal with nagging negative images. All these tools can help you to remember that you can be in control of your body and mind. As you explore your own unconscious processes, you’ll find that understanding why things are happening can help even more.

During REM sleep, the brain allows the appropriate neural connections to make needed associations. The memory is processed and shifted to a more adaptive, usable form. That’s why you can go to bed worried about something but wake up feeling better or with a solution.

Sadly, disturbing experiences, whether major traumas or other kinds of upsetting events, can overwhelm the system. When that happens, the intense emotional and physical disturbance caused by the situation prevents the information processing system from making the internal connections needed to take it to a resolution. Instead, the memory of the situation becomes stored in the brain as you experienced it. What you saw and felt, the image, the emotions, the physical sensations and the thoughts become encoded in memory in their original, unprocessed form.

So, how you respond to the people in your life, and how they respond to you, is based just as much on past experiences as it is on whatever either of you does or says in the present.

EMDR loosens up something in the mind/brain that gives people rapid access to loosely associated memories and images from their past. This seems to help them put the traumatic experience into a larger context or perspective. People may be able to heal from trauma without talking about it. EMDR enables them to observe their experiences in a new way, without verbal give-and-take with another person. EMDR can help even if the patient and the therapist do not have a trusting relationship. This was particularly intriguing because trauma, understandably, rarely leaves people with an open, trusting heart.

For all of us, unprocessed memories are generally the basis of negative responses, attitudes and behaviors. Processed memories, on the other hand, are the basis of adaptive positive responses, attitudes and behaviors.

Nothing exists in a vacuum. Reactions that seem irrational are often exactly that. But irrational doesn’t mean that there is no reason for them. It means that the responses come from a part of our brain that is not governed by the rational mind. The automatic reactions that control our emotions come from neural associations within our memory networks that are independent of our higher reasoning power.

For all of us, unprocessed memories are generally the basis of negative responses, attitudes and behaviors. Processed memories, on the other hand, are the basis of adaptive positive responses, attitudes and behaviors. When clinicians say “personality,” we mean our usual ways of responding to people and events. In addition to genetic factors, each characteristic or personality trait is based on a group of memory networks that cause us to behave or feel in a certain way. These memory networks are created throughout our lives and reflect who we were, where we were, what was happening, when the network was created. That’s why we can seem to be very different at work than we are at home. We can have different typical responses because we may have had a very chaotic home life when we were children, but we were very successful in school.

The experiences we encountered became encoded in our memory networks and are the basis of how we perceive the world as adults. And even the most supportive families can still leave children with unprocessed memories.

I turned to my EMDR trainer, Gerald Puk, and told him how flummoxed I was. This man clearly did not like me, and had looked profoundly distressed during the EMDR session, but now he was telling me that his long-standing misery was gone. How could I possibly know what he had or had not resolved if he was unwilling to tell me what had happened during the session? Gerry smiled and asked if by chance I had become a mental health professional in order to solve some of my own personal issues. I confirmed that most people who knew me thought that might be the case. Then he asked if I found it meaningful when people told me their trauma stories. Again, I had to agree with him. Then he said: “You know, Bessel, maybe you need to learn to put your voyeuristic tendencies on hold. If it’s important for you to hear trauma stories, why don’t you go to a bar, put a couple of dollars on the table, and say to your neighbor, ‘I’ll buy you a drink if you tell me your trauma story.’ But you really need to know the difference between your desire to hear stories and your patient’s internal process of healing.” I took Gerry’s admonition to heart and ever since have enjoyed repeating it to my students.

After only three EMDR sessions eight of the twelve had shown a significant decrease in their PTSD scores. On their scans we could see a sharp increase in prefrontal lobe activation after treatment, as well as much more activity in the anterior cingulate and the basal ganglia. This shift could account for the difference in how they now experienced their trauma.

We subsequently secured funding from the National Institute of Mental Health to compare the effects of EMDR with standard doses of Prozac or a placebo.2 Of our eighty-eight subjects thirty received EMDR, twenty-eight Prozac, and the rest the sugar pill. As often happens, the people on placebo did well. After eight weeks their 42 percent improvement was greater than that for many other treatments that are promoted as “evidence based.” The group on Prozac did slightly better than the placebo group, but barely so. This is typical of most studies of drugs for PTSD: Simply showing up brings about a 30 percent to 42 percent improvement; when drugs work, they add an additional 5 percent to 15 percent. However, the patients on EMDR did substantially better than those on either Prozac or the placebo: After eight EMDR sessions one in four were completely cured (their PTSD scores had dropped to negligible levels), compared with one in ten of the Prozac group. But the real difference occurred over time: When we interviewed our subjects eight months later, 60 percent of those who had received EMDR scored as being completely cured.

Today we know that both deep sleep and REM sleep play important roles in how memories change over time. The sleeping brain reshapes memory by increasing the imprint of emotionally relevant information while helping irrelevant material fade away.12 In a series of elegant studies Stickgold and his colleagues showed that the sleeping brain can even make sense out of information whose relevance is unclear while we are awake and integrate it into the larger memory system.13 Dreams keep replaying, recombining, and reintegrating pieces of old memories for months and even years.14 They constantly update the subterranean realities that determine what our waking minds pay attention to. And perhaps most relevant to EMDR, in REM sleep we activate more distant associations than in either non-REM sleep or the normal waking state. For example, when subjects are wakened from non-REM sleep and given a word-association test, they give standard responses: hot/cold, hard/soft, etc. Wakened from REM sleep, they make less conventional connections, such as thief/wrong.15 They also solve simple anagrams more easily after REM sleep. This shift toward activation of distant associations could explain why dreams are so bizarre.16

Clinicians have only one obligation: to do whatever they can to help their patients get better. Because of this, clinical practice has always been a hotbed for experimentation. Some experiments fail, some succeed, and some, like EMDR, dialectical behavior therapy, and internal family systems therapy, go on to change the way therapy is practiced. Validating all these treatments takes decades and is hampered by the fact that research support generally goes to methods that have already been proven to work. I am much comforted by considering the history of penicillin: Almost four decades passed between the discovery of its antibiotic properties by Alexander Fleming in 1928 and the final elucidation of its mechanisms in 1965.

There is no question traumatized people have irrational thoughts: "I was to blame for being so sexy." "The other guys weren't afraid - they're real men." "I should have known better than to walk down that street." It's best to treat those thoughts as cognitive flashbacks - you don't argue with them any more than you would argue with someone who keeps having visual flashbacks of a terrible accident. They are residues of traumatic incidents: thoughts they were thinking when, or shortly after, the traumas occurred that are reactivated under stressful conditions. A better way to treat them is with EMDR....

Research had already shown that sleep, and dream sleep in particular, plays a major role in mood regulation. As the article in "Dreaming" pointed out, the eyes move rapidly back and forth in REM sleep, just as they do in EMDR. Increasing our time in REM sleep reduces depression, while the less REM sleep we get, the more likely we are to become depressed......Today we know that both deep sleep and REM sleep play important roles in how memories change over time. The sleeping brain reshapes memory by increasing the imprint of emotionally relevant information while helping irrelevant material fade away. In a series of elegant studies Stickgold and his colleagues showed that the sleeping brain can even make sense out of information whose relevance is unclear while we are awake and integrate it into the larger memory system.

Unprocessed memories not only can intensify our sensations and emotional responses, they can also prevent us from feeling.

everyday life experiences, such as relationship problems or unemployment, can produce just as many, and sometimes even more, symptoms of PTSD.

Problemas oculares Se ha registrado un informe de un paciente que sufrió daño ocular grave que resultó en ceguera debido al tratamiento con movimientos oculares. Esto ocurrió en manos de un terapeuta que no estaba formado en el uso de EMDR. Aparentemente, a pesar de que el paciente indicaba dolor ocular constante, el clínico, que no tenía conocimiento de los efectos del tratamiento EMDR, continuó aplicando las tandas de movimientos oculares. Bajo ninguna circunstancia se debe continuar con el procesamiento EMDR si el paciente indica dolor de ojos. Si esto ocurre, el clínico debe usar formas alternativas de estimulación. Lo mismo se aplica para los pacientes que no pueden realizar tandas continuas de movimientos oculares por debilidad de los músculos oculares.

EMDR therapy targets the unprocessed memories that contain the negative emotions, sensations and beliefs. By activating the brain’s information processing system (which will be explained in Chapter 2), the old memories can then be “digested.” Meaning what is useful is learned, what’s useless is discarded, and the memory is now stored in a way that is no longer damaging.

your brain is most affected by bottom-up experiences.

Those little buzzers had worked some kind of Robin Williams magic. I didn't just understand the weight of my abuse logically. I felt it, like a blade through flesh, a bone popping out of place. I felt it like a lover saying it's not going to work: sharp, immediate, and terrifying. I actually felt, with searing clarity, the horror of what happened to me -- maybe for the first time ever. I felt how tremendously sad it was that I was forced to make my parents feel loved at such a young age. I felt how courageous I must have been to endure that torture, day after day for so many years, by the people I trusted most in this world. I felt a sense of love and adoration for my childhood self that I'd never been able to summon before. There is a difference between knowing and understanding. I had known that this wasn't my fault. EMDR unlocked the gate to the next realm, towards understanding. The difference is one between rote memorization and true learning. Between hypothesis and belief. Between prayer and faith. It seems obvious now -- how can there be love without faith?

I’m a huge SWANS and Lynch fan and an independently licensed therapist certified in EMDR. Let me just say that therapy is definitely not for everyone. It’s hard work and creates insight that not everyone wants and healing that not everyone is ready to experience. That being said, I’m certain I’ve saved hundreds of lives through the years—not because I have a huge ego, but because patients have told me so. People must learn to trust their own self. The inner voice is the only real truth.

Another key finding of our study: Adults with histories of childhood trauma responded very differently to EMDR from those who were traumatized as adults. At the end of eight weeks, almost half of the adult-onset group that received EMDR scored as completely cured, while only 9 percent of the child-abuse group showed such pronounced improvement. Eight months later the cure rate was 73 percent for the adult-onset group, compared with 25 percent for those with histories of child abuse. The child-abuse group had small but consistently positive responses to Prozac.

It’s interesting that the SSRIs are widely used to treat depression, but in a study in which we compared Prozac with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) for patients with PTSD, many of whom were also depressed, EMDR proved to be a more effective antidepressant than Prozac.

Austin Trauma Therapy Center offers inclusive therapy for all people! We offer: EMDR, DBT, Depression, Anxiety, PTSD treatment, etc. We provide child, adolescent, adult, couples, and family counseling services.

Unlike more conventional talk therapy, where you constantly revisit and discuss a traumatic event, EMDR allows you to process the trauma in fewer sessions, gently move past it so the brain will no longer be reacting in a fight-or-flight response.

During EMDR, both the protocol and the bilateral stimulation contribute to the simultaneous activation of previously disconnected elements of neural, mental, and interpersonal processes. This simultaneous activation then primes the system to achieve new levels of integration.

Research has shown that about five hours of EMDR treatment eliminates PTSD in 84 to 100 percent of civilians with a single trauma experience, including rape, accident, or disaster.

EMDR promises to dial down the acute agitation brought on by specific memories.

some medical students, he conducted a survey of 225 people who had escaped from the Twin Towers. Asked what had been most helpful in overcoming the effects of their experience, the survivors credited acupuncture, massage, yoga, and EMDR, in that order.1 Among rescue workers, massages were particularly popular. Eth’s survey suggests that the most helpful interventions focused on relieving the physical burdens generated by trauma. The disparity between the survivors’ experience and the experts’ recommendations is intriguing. Of course, we don’t know how many survivors eventually did

(EMDR) allowed him to access his memories of the accident without being overwhelmed by them. When the brain areas whose absence is responsible for flashbacks can be kept online while remembering what has happened, people can integrate their traumatic memories as belonging to

As in EMDR the resolution of the trauma was the result of her ability to access her imagination and rework the scenes in which she had become frozen so long ago. Helpless

On a scale of one to ten, how strong is the emotion attached to the memories we’ve been working on?” Curtis Rouanzoin asks one day. The procedure I’ve been going through with him is called EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, which looks at the way trauma is stored in the brain and attempts to properly process it. “If it used to be a ten, now it’s an eight,” I tell him. Lindsay Joy Greene is trained in a therapy called SE, or somatic experiencing, and she’s been locating trauma trapped not in my brain, but in my body, and releasing the stored energy. One day she asks, “On a scale of one to ten, how much anger do you feel when you recall the memories we’ve been discussing?” “If it used to be an eight, now it’s a seven,” I tell her. Olga Stevko practices her own variant of NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. Where the experientials with Lorraine were about debugging my operating system, her process is about rewriting the original code. For example, she tells me that inside my mother’s words, “Never grow up to make anyone as miserable as your father makes me,” was a hidden command: Never grow up. As she helps me grow up, it brings my trauma down to a six. Greg Cason specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, which takes it to a five. And I don’t know what to call Barbara McNally’s method and her bottomless quiver of techniques, but they work, they’re original, and they bring the emotion associated with those memories to a four. And I do so much more: I beat pillows with baseball bats. I tap on energy meridians. I make shadow maps of my dark side. I try psychodrama. Not all of it works, but none of it hurts.

Interestingly, in the first solid scientific study using EMDR in combat veterans with PTSD, EMDR was expected to do so poorly that it was included as the control condition for comparison with biofeedback-assisted relaxation therapy. To the researchers’ surprise, twelve sessions of EMDR turned out to be the more effective treatment.

Cada parte o rol traumatizado es una parte congelada y disociada.

través de la disociación, se regresa a esos lugares internos donde se tiene la ilusión de estar protegido.

Maar voor diegenen onder ons die door het leven verwond zijn en wier littekens nog niet zijn geheeld, kan het pijnlijk en angstwekkend zijn om zich naar hun binnenste te keren. In zo'n geval is de toegang tot onze innerlijke bron van coherentie geblokkeerd. Zoiets gebeurt meestal als gevolg van een trauma waarbij de emoties zo overweldigend waren dat het emotionele brein en dus het hart niet meer functioneren zoals daarvoor. Dan zijn ze geen kompas meer, maar als een vlag in een wervelwind. Dan is er een andere manier om evenwicht te hervinden, een even verbazingwekkende als effectieve methode, die zijn oorsprong vindt in het mechanisme van de droom: de neuro-emotionele integratie door oogbewegingen.

Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy. Emmaus, PA: Rodale, 2012. Shapiro, Francine, and Margot Silk Forrest. EMDR: The Breakthrough “Eye Movement” Therapy for Overcoming Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma. New York: Basic Books, 2004.

EMDR, in which EMDR had better long-term results than Prozac in treating depression, at least in adult onset trauma.

Todo buen proceso terapéutico posee tres momentos: diagnóstico, terapéutica y aprendizaje.

Above all, words cannot express my gratitude for EMDR. Without it, this book would not have happened.

Yes, our spiritual health impacts our mental and psychological well-being. But if all mental illness were caused by a lack of faith or a demon, would that mean that medications like Zoloft are a substitute for belief or that therapies like EMDR are equivalent to an exorcism? Because Zoloft and EMDR are very effective.

When we recognize that we are being held back in life, the question for each of us is “What do I do about it?