Treating OCD with EMDR Therapy

This is how EMDR intervention helps to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, usually abbreviated as OCD, is a complex psychological disorder that expresses itself through two phases, as its name suggests: obsessions, on the one hand, and compulsions, on the other.

This mixture of elements means that, normally, those who develop its symptoms do not even know where to start when trying to combat this psychopathology, which is one of the indications that professional help is always necessary to treat it.

Fortunately, there are currently useful therapeutic tools to combat OCD and get the lives of those who suffer from it back to normal. In this article we will talk about one of these intervention models: EMDR therapy applied to the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder..

What is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

OCD is a disorder in which a kind of vicious circle occurs. First, there appears in the person's consciousness a thought or mental image (sometimes a memory, sometimes a fanciful exaggeration of the present, sometimes an imagined situation about what might come to pass) that disturbs him or her and generates a sudden high degree of discomfort, usually in the form of distress or anxiety.

This mental content is what is known as obsessionbecause the person tries to expel it from his consciousness at all costs and, at the same time, this urgency causes his attention to remain fixed on this thought or image. As we will see, the nature of the compulsion is very important in understanding why EMDR therapy is used to treat OCD.

Second, the person with OCD begins to desperately look for ways to get rid of that discomfort as soon as possible, to get that disturbing image or idea out of his or her consciousness. And in order to put an end to this experience, he or she performs a certain action that is apparently arbitrary, but whose meaning is more or less linked to the mental content that makes him or her feel bad. This kind of ritual is what is known as compulsion..

Let's take an example: a person remembers that a week ago he made a fool of himself in front of someone he likes, and because of this he cannot help but start thinking about it over and over again, recalling the event in an increasingly exaggerated way. As this causes him/her anguish and he/she cannot stop thinking about it, because he/she feels "contaminated" by this event, the person washes his/her hands repeatedly, always following a pattern of movements from which he/she cannot escape, since not complying with this self-washing rule would not put an end to the discomfort.

Over time, the person learns that each time the person learns that every time he/she feels bad, he/she will have to perform such a ritual.At the same time, this predisposition to give much importance to the disturbing thoughts will make them appear often in his mind. Because of this, the problem becomes bigger and bigger: not only does he loses a lot of time because he has to perform compulsions, but also his health is damaged (in particular, his skin) and he has to interrupt many important tasks during the day, since these small crises last several minutes.

What is the treatment of OCD with EMDR based on?

As we have seen, OCD is a psychopathology that is related to a kind of superstitious thinking, according to which it is only possible to get rid of psychological discomfort by performing compulsions. However, it is a disorder that can be developed in people who we would normally consider rational in most areas of their lives: they only apply this kind of "superstitious thinking".It is a disorder that can be developed in people who are rational in most areas of their lives: they just apply that sort of "magical thinking" to the way they deal with their compulsions.

And ultimately, doing those rituals works for them to feel immediate relief; the problem is that in the medium to long term, feeding the vicious cycle of obsessions and compulsions is a bigger problem than the discomfort of dealing with each and every obsession.

With this in mind... how is EMDR therapy used? This type of psychological intervention, whose acronym comes from the term "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing", is based on the idea that many disorders linked to anxiety and distress have their main cause in an incomplete or inadequate processing of certain memories. Thus, in order to solve the patient's discomfort, it is necessary to modify the way in which the brain stores these mental contents, so that they do not express themselves.so that they are not expressed over and over again in a problematic way.

To achieve this, a series of brain stimulation exercises are performed with the aim of making the contents that do not fit well with the memory system to be integrated again in the person's mind without causing distress. One of the ways resorted to has to do with guiding the patient's gaze in certain directions, in order to achieve a differentiated stimulation in each hemisphere of the brain.

At the same time, a context is created in which the patient evokes those contents that usually produce anxiety or crises, so that they lose their harmful effect and are treated by the brain like any other memory.. In many ways, EMDR therapy resembles systematic desensitization, in the sense that a new framework is created in which to experience that which normally disturbs or causes distress.

Bibliographical references:

• Bloch, M.H.; Landeros-Weisenberger, A.; Rosario, M.C.; Pittenger, C.; Leckman, J.F. (2008). "Meta-analysis of the symptom structure of obsessive-compulsive disorder". The American Journal of Psychiatry. 165 (12): pp. 1532 - 1542.
• Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders : DSM-5 (5 ed.). Washington: American Psychiatric Publishing.
• Grant, J.E. (2014). Clinical practice: Obsessive-compulsive disorder. The New England Journal of Medicine. 371(7): pp. 646 - 653.
• Logie, R. (2014). EMDR - more than just a therapy for PTSD?. The Psychologist. 27(7): pp. 512 - 517.
• Shapiro, F.; Laliotis, D. (2015). EMDR Therapy for Trauma-Related Disorders. Evidence Based Treatments for Trauma-Related Psychological Disorders: A Practical Guide for Clinicians. Springer International Publishing. pp. 205 - 228.