The Problem With EMDR for Flying Phobia and Trauma

More than 99% of clients report total success in just 1 to 3 sessions

The Problem With EMDR for Flying Phobia and Trauma

I recently heard from a person whose trauma was so severe and spanned most of her childhood that she developed DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), a rare condition previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder. She told me that she had been in therapy for years and that her therapist was trying to get her “ready” for EMDR. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is supposed to be this “groundbreaking” technique that resolves trauma and similar conditions like specific phobia. So here’s my question: If it’s so groundbreaking, then why must the most severely traumatized people be in therapy for years to get them “ready” for it? And why do people with severe phobias avoid it?  

When the “inventor” of EMDR, Francine Shapiro, worked for NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) founder John Grinder in the early 1980s, she asked him for help in treating a client who had been raped. He taught her a technique that involved systematic eye movements while her client reviewed the trauma. Francine reported that the work had been successful. She later turned those suggestions into a format she called EMDR but never credited its sources, which were John Grinder and NLP. But here’s the thing, when Dr. Shapiro developed the method known as EMDR, she turned it into a desensitization technique. Desensitization involves systematically exposing the person to the “bad” experience behind the trauma or phobia. Hence, EMDR is in essence a form of “exposure” therapy. And that is why so many people do not find it helpful, while others have to go through years of therapy to be “ready” for it. I realized this after hearing from many people who had been retraumatized by EMDR and who didn’t ever want to relive that again. The reality is that some people’s experiences are so bad that it feels almost cruel to have them relive or re-experience it. In developing EMDR, Dr. Shapiro did not heed her teacher’s advice not to have her clients’ re-experience or relive their bad feelings from their trauma or phobia. I believe that this is the major reason why EMDR takes in excess of 10 sessions for more severe cases and cannot be used until the person has had years of therapy in the most extreme cases. This contrasts with the 2-3 sessions needed in my TOTAL RESET Program, which is wholly derived from John Grinder and Richard Bandler’s NLP technique called Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation, otherwise known as the Rewind Technique. As I discuss in another post on How Do I  Overcome My Fear of Flying V/K dissociation does not involve exposure, reliving, or re-experiencing. It has been used successfully for all forms of trauma, including PTSD and CPTSD, and all types of specific phobia, including aerophobia (flying phobia). 

Like other exposure methods, EMDR presumes that one must return to the scene of the “crime” and relive what they experienced to “reprocess” it cognitively to gain a new understanding of what they experienced. It also presumes that the core drivers of change are cognitive-that a new understanding of what happened leads to a different response. But NLP does not operate at the cognitive level to drive change. Instead, it operates at a much deeper neurological level, as explained in How do I Overcome My Fear of Flying, where phobia and trauma reside. 

Conclusion: EMDR takes too long, is too painful to be useful for lots of folks. It does not get at the root cause of a trauma or phobia, which is at a neurological level. 

If you are interested in learning more about how the TOTAL RESET program can change your life by enabling you to attend family events, go on stress-free vacations with your romantic partner, and supercharge your business by allowing you to go anywhere in the world, then use the link below to schedule your free strategy session.

Conquer your flying phobia - permanently

99% success rate over 30 years of practice

Like other exposure methods, EMDR presumes that one must return to the scene of the “crime” and relive what they experienced to “reprocess” it cognitively to gain a new understanding of what they experienced. It also presumes that the core drivers of change are cognitive-that a new understanding of what happened leads to a different response. But NLP does not operate at the cognitive level to drive change. Instead, it operates at a much deeper, neurological level, which I will discuss in another post. It gets right to the root cause of trauma and phobia, which is not at the cognitive level.

Conclusion: EMDR takes too long, is too painful to be useful for lots of folks. It does not get at the root cause of a trauma or phobia, which is at a neurological level.

If you are interested in learning more about how the Total Reset Method can change your life by enabling you to attend family events, go on stress-free vacations with your romantic partner, and supercharge your business by allowing you to go anywhere in the world, then use the link below to schedule your free strategy session.

Reach out today to quickly and easily
conquer your flying phobia - permanently.