EMDR Forum Archive, 1999
Re: Social Phobia & EMDR
Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D. · 4/14/00 at 12:49 pm ET
I agree with the above, and have a couple of points to add. For a few people, whose childhoods were optimal and whose trauma histories were negative, a single traumatic event, such as a car accident, can sometimes be resolved very rapidly -- best case, one intake interview, one long EMDR session, (or let's say two, the second to address subsequent medical treatment as a secondary traumatization), and another for follow up and closure. That's the extremely short treatment. On the other extreme, someone with a history of hundreds of molestations in childhood, who subsequently is in the same car accident as the person above, may require months of work before EMDR is ever attempted, due to the complexities of dissociation in this hypothetical person. As an interim example, let me pick social phobia, which is in the subject line. Social phobia is often associated with not a single Trauma but rather with what EMDR therapists call "little t" traumas. By this we mean those hundreds or thousands of small insults to self esteem, trust, confidence, etc, that occur in some people's lives, beginning with the formative first years. For such a person, a number of different EMDRs may be needed to address the complex tapestry of maladaptive lessons learned in that complex unrewarding environment. The controlled research on EMDR has been on traumatized populations. The above impressions are based on clinical experience. Basically, however long it would have taken without EMDR, it goes faster with EMDR.
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