Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, usually abbreviated as OCD, is a complex psychological disorder that is expressed through two phases, as its name indicates: obsessions, on the one hand, and compulsions, on the other.
This mixture of elements means that, normally, those who develop their 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.
Luckily, there are now useful therapeutic tools to combat OCD and make the lives of those who suffer from it return to normal. In this article we will talk about one of these intervention models: EMDR therapy applied to the treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
OCD is a disorder in which a kind of vicious cycle occurs. First, a thought or mental image appears in the person’s consciousness (sometimes a memory, sometimes a fanciful exaggeration of the present, sometimes an imagined situation about what could happen) that disturbs the person and generates an anxiety. sudden high degree of discomfort, usually in the form of anguish or anxiety.
This mental content is what is known as obsession., because the person tries to expel it from their consciousness at all costs and, at the same time, that urgency causes their attention to remain fixed on this thought or image. As we will see, the nature of the compulsion is very important to understanding why EMDR therapy is used to treat OCD.
Secondly, the person with OCD begins to desperately look for ways to get rid of that discomfort as soon as possible, to make that disturbing image or idea stay out of their consciousness. And in order to put an end to that experience, he performs a certain action that is apparently arbitrary, but whose meaning is more or less linked to that mental content that makes him feel bad. This type 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 can’t help but start thinking about it over and over again, remembering the event in an increasingly exaggerated way. Since this causes anxiety and they cannot stop thinking about it, because they feel “contaminated” by that event, the person washes their hands repeatedly, always following a pattern of movements from which they cannot deviate since breaking this self-washing rule It wouldn’t put an end to the discomfort.
Over time, The person learns that every time they feel bad, they must perform a ritual of that type, and at the same time, this predisposition to give a lot of importance to disturbing thoughts will make them appear often in your mind. Because of this, the problem becomes bigger and bigger: not only does he waste a lot of time because he finds himself having to perform compulsions, but his health is also harmed (specifically, his skin) and he has to interrupt many important tasks during the day. day to day, given that these small crises last several minutes.
As we have seen, OCD is a psychopathology that is related to a type of superstitious thinking, according to which it is only possible to get rid of psychological discomfort by carrying out 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 just apply that kind of “magical thinking” to the way they deal with their compulsions.
And at the end of the day, doing those rituals works for them to feel relief immediately; The problem is that in the medium and long term, feeding the vicious cycle of obsessions and compulsions is a bigger problem than the discomfort of facing each of the obsessions.
Considering this… 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 anguish have their main cause in incomplete or inadequate processing of certain memories. So, To solve the patient’s discomfort, it is necessary to modify the way in which the brain stores these mental contents.so that these are not expressed again and again in a problematic way.
To achieve this, a series of brain stimulation exercises are carried out that aim to ensure that the contents that do not fit well with the memory system are reintegrated into the person’s mind without causing distress. One of the ways used has to do with guiding the patient’s gaze in certain directions, in order to achieve 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 cause anxiety or crises, so that these lose their harmful effect and are treated by the brain like any other memory. In many ways, EMDR therapy is similar to systematic desensitization, in that it creates a new framework in which to experience what normally disturbs or causes distress.
