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The Unitarian Church of All Souls • 1157 Lexington Avenue • New York, NY 10021 email: peacetaskforcenyc@yahoo.com
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THERAPEUTIC HEALING OF VETS WITH PTSD
On November 9, 2008, at 1:00 p.m., the Peace and Justice Task Force presented a moving program on a revolutionary therapeutic approach to the post-traumatic stress disorder that is afflicting all too many veterans of the Iraq war. This approach to PTSD, called EMDR – for Eye Movement, Desensitization, and Reprocessing – was developed in 1989 by Dr. Francine Shapiro, who is now a senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. The terrible stress of combat depletes soldiers of psychic energy. Thus, when they return as veterans to civilian life, they may be emotionally numb, unable to get close to loved ones; they may also experience physical reactions (heart pounding, trouble breathing, sweating), feel jumpy or easily startled, involuntarily relive scenes of combat, and burst out in anger or irritation. They may medicate themselves with alcohol and/or drugs, find it difficult to hold a job, and have other difficulties adjusting to civilian life. Where most therapies work from the top (mind) down to the body and emotions, EMDR starts from the body and is based on the theory that, in trauma, our natural psychological healing apparatus becomes frozen. Following a strict protocol and alternately stimulating both sides of a client’s brain, the therapist, avoiding any intellectualizing, suggests that he imagine he is watching a movie of himself or is on a moving train looking out at the passing landscape. After a time, the therapist will stop the bilateral stimulation and ask the person to take a deep breath, open his eyes, and report what is there – now. Once the client does this, the therapist begins anew the bilateral stimulation, periodically stopping to find out what is “there now,” until the patient’s emotional distress disappears. It may not disappear in a single session, though it frequently does for a specific experience. So successful has EMDR been in helping relieve PTSD that the Veterans Administration has approved it, as have the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Ted Schmitt, a member of All Souls and a licensed clinical social worker who uses EMDR to help patients with PTSD, described this approach and presented a short film about it. One of his clients, Lee Velta, opened the program with an eloquent and persuasive description of EMDR’s efficacy in helping him eliminate the PTSD symptoms he had suffered all the years since his return from battle. |