How Does EMDR Therapy Work When Applied To Patients With OCD?
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a psychopathology with an incredible ability to “infiltrate” people’s daily lives without them realizing, for quite some time, that something is wrong.
Luckily, once psychopathology has been detected and identified as such, it is possible to overcome it through psychotherapy; After years of research in the field of psychology, effective intervention programs have been developed for all variants of this disorder.
In this article We are going to focus on one of these intervention options in cases of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: EMDR therapy.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, usually abbreviated as OCD, is a psychopathology that, as its name indicates, includes two dysfunctional elements that feed off each other: obsessions and compulsions.
Obsessions consist of recurring and intrusive thoughts that, when they emerge in the person’s consciousness, generate deep discomfort. They may consist of memories or scenes based on pure imagination that have never happened. (or that the person has the feeling that they could occur) and that produce anguish and associated feelings, such as guilt, shame, etc.
Compulsions, on the other hand, are patterns of behavior that the person gets used to doing to alleviate the discomfort caused by obsession and that, in some way, brings that cycle of discomfort to an end, even if it is for the moment. Compulsions tend to be sequences of very structured actions that must always be performed in the same way so that the person does not feel bad at that moment and have to start over; The only change that can occur in this chain of behaviors is to add more elements to it, making it increasingly more complex and capable of consuming efforts and time.
But although compulsions produce a feeling of relief and make it possible for the obsession to “move away” from the person’s goal, that does not mean that they are the solution. In the medium and long term, the fact of getting involved in such a methodical and obsessive way in mitigating obsessions causes them to be reinforced, since we adopt a greater predisposition to attract it to our consciousness and experience an intense emotional reaction when this occurs, which we feel we can only remedy through compulsions.
And in this way, a vicious circle dynamic is entered, which constitutes the element that keeps this disorder “alive” over time, and even makes it become more harmful.
Fortunately, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can be treated effectively in psychotherapy, and one of the most useful therapeutic resources in this sense is EMDR therapy. Let’s see how it is used in these cases.
What is EMDR therapy and how is it applied to OCD cases?
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy aims to “undo” the problematic thought pathways that we have consolidated in our brain to process certain memories. In short, it allows us to do a mental “reset” and integrate certain memories and mental content into our memory from scratch, and in a way that does not trigger an excessive emotional response in us.
Due to the nature of this intervention, EMDR therapy is widely used in cases of trauma (based on memories that have been “recorded” in our memory in a very emotionally painful way) and also in cases of disorders such as OCD.
The reason for this is that in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder there is a special sensitivity to the obsessions that trigger compulsions, and Through EMDR intervention, these mental contents become something more neutral for the person., a thought that you can let go to see how they leave the same way they arrived. That is, without leaving our memory system as it was before the appearance of OCD, the contents of the obsessions stop leading the person to a phenomenon of loss of control and intense, disabling emotional pain.
Furthermore, EMDR sessions involve performing tasks that are simple from the patient’s point of view (although they actually mobilize many psychological elements), and in fact, EMDR therapy can be applied to minors, because it is necessary to have with a great capacity for abstract thinking.
Once the therapy process has started on a weekly basis, the results appear in a few monthsand are maintained once the psychotherapy process is completed.
Are you looking for professional psychological assistance?
If you want to have psychotherapeutic support for OCD or other psychological disorders that can erode your quality of life, contact our team of professionals and start treatment with us.
In Psychomaster We serve adults, children and adolescents individually, as well as families and couples, adapting to their specific needs, and the sessions can be carried out in person at our center located in Madrid or via video call in the online mode.
