Francine Shapiro Quotes

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.

The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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