The Three Themes of EMDR
One of my favorite things about EMDR is the way it helps therapists and clients conceptualize problems. You might be wondering what that even means. To my non-therapist readers, every therapist has what’s called a theoretical orientation - a type of therapy they use to understand their clients’ symptoms and struggles. Popular theoretical orientations include CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy), and psychodynamic therapy, all of which have become more commonly referred to even outside of therapist circles. With EMDR, the foundational framework, called Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) therapy, is a theoretical orientation that believes that present day stressors need to be viewed through the lens of past experiences, and that issues arise when the past and present blend together, creating poor reactions, emotional outbursts, and distress.
Part of what the AIP lens does for clients is it takes their issues and filters them into one (or more) categories to further explain the underlying issue. Those three categories are:
Defectiveness/responsibility - I’m not worthy, I’m inadequate, I’m not good enough, everything is my fault, I’m to blame, etc.
Safety/vulnerability - I am unsafe, I cannot trust other people, etc.
Power/control - I’m powerless, I have no autonomy over my life, I am completely out of control, etc.
It’s important to remember that these beliefs have to be maladaptive today, meaning they are not accurately depicting present-day scenarios and are causing undue distress. For example, someone in an abusive relationship likely feels unsafe, but that makes sense given the circumstances, whereas someone in a healthy relationship with a history of abusive relationships may feel unsafe as those past experiences bleed into the present, but that client would not be in present danger.
The reason I find this really helpful is because it helps highlight patterns in a really effective way. Clients do not “randomly” possess these beliefs; they are cultivated over time based on years, decades of past experiences, so figuring out what they are and where they come from help clients understand why they think, feel, and respond the way they do. For many of my clients, that first step can feel validating and empowering on its own, without completing any reprocessing yet.
For example, a client who experienced the silent treatment growing up might feel like they don’t matter because when their parent was giving them the silent treatment, nothing they said changed anything and they felt like their opinions and needs did not matter in those moments. And yes, at the time, that made a lot of sense, but now as adults, that negative belief of “I don’t matter” might make them second-guess themselves in their relationships, keep them from speaking up for themselves, or even tolerating poor behavior or abuse because they don’t feel like they matter enough to be treated any better. They might come to therapy due to stress at work and at home, know they feel like they don’t matter, but can’t fathom why it is they feel this way. By exploring the past-present connection here, they’re able to understand how their childhood experiences are impacting how they show up for themselves and other people.
This kind of framework also helps clients figure out their future vision, their path forward in therapy. How will they know what it feels like to actually matter in a relationship? How will they know when they have an intrinsic sense of self-worth, of mattering regardless of how other people feel about them? What will it look like to feel empowered? Safe? By looking at the negative beliefs, we are automatically forced to think about their opposites, the adaptive information that they either already possess that is clouded by these negative experiences or the gap in adaptive information that we can build together.
All of this is something I use with every single client, even if they are not coming to me for EMDR or have no interest in reprocessing memories. It helps me (and them if they’re willing to dig into it with me) understand why they’re in therapy and how we’ll know when therapy has done its job. It’s both enlightening and empowering, helping to foster understanding and self-compassion within clients, sometimes for the first time.
