A New Eye Movement Psychotherapy
For Beverly, life had essentially stopped since that fateful day two years ago when her husband had died in a tragic car wreck. Beverly could not get the image of seeing her husband change from conscious awareness to lifeless stillness in that emergency room bed. The visual image replayed over and over, and the pain of it occurred as if it had just taken place. Beverly finally decided that she was willing to work on seeing her husband of thirty-five years die before her eyes.
We departed from our usual procedures when I asked her to watch a colored visual target that I held. She was asked to look only at that target while I kept her focused on the issue by verbalizing it. Within two minutes there was no more image of death and no more pain about that incident. The stunning, rapid change caused her to exclaim, “I can’t believe it!” Nonetheless, it was gone, and she could now talk about that event without even a hint of distress. Moreover, it never came back.
How could looking at a handheld, colored target completely eliminate the extreme pain and change such a devastating trauma? The tragic shock caused by the death of Beverly’s husband had tormented her daily for over two years. Now, with a new procedure, hope exists for Beverly and others, along with the possibility of a rapid recovery. Let’s explore how this stunning process works.
The therapeutic use of eye movement for psychological and physical changes is undergoing a basic paradigmatic shift with the advent of multidimensional eye movement (MDEM). There is a long history of using some aspect of the eye’s functioning to enhance therapeutic purposes. During the last decade eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) has been validated as a means for relieving certain aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder and has gained widespread popularity (Carlson, Chemtob, Rusnak, Hedlund, and Muraoka, 1998; Ahmad, Larsson, Sundelin-Whalsten, 2007; Chemtob, Nakashima, and Carlson, 2002; Edmond, Rubin, and Wambach, 1999; Rothbaum, 1997). However, eye-movement procedures have long been used in different cultures like those of China and Brazil. The new development of variations of eye-movement processes has substantially improved the potential to change and improve eye-movement methods over time. MDEM provides a substantial leap forward in the precision and impact of eye movement and eye position for rapid therapeutic gains. MDEM is one cluster of processes within the overall method of Emotional Transformation Therapy® (ETT®) (Vazquez, 2004).
MDEM versus EMDR
How does multidimensional eye movement (MDEM) differ from EMDR? There are at least twelve ways in which MDEM differs from EMDR.
- MDEM is used to facilitate rapid reduction of many more forms of physical pain than EMDR.
- The specific wavelength (color) of light entering the eyes during eye fixation and eye movement is an important factor in MDEM and not in EMDR.
- The directions of eye movements used in MDEM are infinite but are limited in EMDR.
- Fixed eye positions play a prominent role in MDEM and are not used in EMDR.
- Eye position or eye movement is based upon “eye scan pathways” in MDEM, not in EMDR.
- There are more speeds of eye movement used in MDEM and the premise upon which speed of movement is chosen is different from EMDR.
- MDEM provides rapid access to relevant implicit memory and affect to a far greater degree than EMDR.
- Visual perceptual feedback is verbalized by the client to adjust eye movements during MDEM in many cases, and verbalization during EMDR is discouraged.
- Unilateral visual stimulation is often the focus of eye position or eye movement instead of the dual focus of EMDR methods.
- MDEM is only one of several techniques in the ETT® method.
- Specific forms of interpersonal responses are used in conjunction with eye techniques that vary according to the attachment pattern of the client in ETT® which is unlikely in EMDR.
- MDEM utilizes focal points in a three-dimensional visual field as compared to two dimensions used in EMDR.
- Facilitating substantial affective change typically takes place much faster by MDEM than EMDR.
While the popularity of EMDR has brought attention to the role of the eyes in psychological processing, many people are not familiar with the different types of eye activity. MDEM was originally developed by this author in 1992 and has been expanded to its current usage in the last decade. Research in optometric sciences has clarified the different types of eye activity and their functions.
Memory Retrieval and Eye Movement
There exists both an internal and external function of vision. Once light enters the eyes it is converted into impulses that travel through the entire brain and nervous system. (Liberman, 1991) This visual pathway is bidirectional, meaning we can retrieve information such as emotion and images drawn from within the visual pathway system, or an image associated with emotion can be taken into the visual system from an external source. Of course, these two types of vision are interrelated. Certain eye activity accesses awareness of internal psychological and physical experiences by means of the visual pathway. MDEM involves observing and using external eye activity that activates internal visual pathways and then utilizing these pathways to facilitate change related to emotions or physical symptoms.
Most of the clients with whom visual light stimulation was used, who had already experienced EMDR, became aware of entirely new memories related to their issue when MDEM was used. This suggests that the type of rapid saccadic eye movement used in EMDR often fails to elicit the psychological depth necessary to relieve the implicit memory associated with the conscious awareness of trauma processed in EMDR sessions. Saccadic eye movement is not associated with long-term memory (Henderson and Hollingsworth, 1999; Hollingsworth, Williams, and Henderson, 2001). Therefore, while saccadic eye movement in EMDR can facilitate change in a known trauma, it is very limited in its comparative capacity to retrieve implicit memory. This could mean that an issue and unresolved emotions would continue to arise even though superficial relief may have taken place initially with EMDR.
On the other hand, visual fixation, gaze aversion, and closing the eyes have been found to aid retrieval of recollections as well as increasing the efficiency of encoding memory (Einstein, Earles, and Collins, 2002; Glenberg, Schroeder, and Robertson, 1998). Eye fixation is known to take place during hypnosis, which is well documented to retrieve memory (Hammond, 1990). However, while visual fixation retrieves memory, the accompanying affect does not necessarily progress. In many cases, retrieval of memory results in emotional flooding—a situation that can re-traumatize a person who suddenly recalls a dormant traumatic memory.
Retrieval of traumatic memory is usually only valuable if it can be rapidly processed in order to limit re-traumatization. However, in MDEM visual targets that resonate with the emotional tone of the recollection are used to facilitate progress of affect. When this takes place along with interpersonal responses appropriate to the client’s attachment pattern, retrieved affect tends to rapidly progress through its fixated state.
Combining Verbalization and Eye Movement
An additional factor discovered in scientific research is that “visual impact can alter spoken language comprehension, and spoken instructions can alter visual perception” (Beaulieu, 2003, p. 87). This means that verbal guidance during guided eye movements amplifies the internal cross-talk between cognitive, affective, linguistic, and sensory activity. As a result, verbalization and eye movement together form a synthesis that yields far greater outcomes than either process alone (Eberhard, Spivey-Knowlton, Sedivy, and Tanenhaus, 1995). Therefore, when the facilitator verbally replicates descriptions of the client’s emotion at the same time the client is doing the prescribed eye movement, the process is often amplified. This keeps the clients’ mental attention on track during the process while relieving the client from the task of verbalizing during eye movement. However, spontaneous client verbalizations are also helpful and may serve to inform the facilitator about the client’s changing psychological progress so that the facilitator can make adjustments to stay attuned to the client. Verbal expressions by the client are particularly valuable if the client’s issue concerns thwarted verbal expression.
In addition to the use of color and verbal input, appropriate empathy provides the support that also encourages disclosure and progress through fixated affect. This third factor often provides a base of safety that allows the otherwise defended emotion to emerge. Communication of attunement to the client’s experience during emotional experiences reduces the tendency toward intensification of affect as well as the tendency for unresolved emotion to endure excessively. In many cases, the emotion is fixated because of the absence of interpersonal support during the original formation of the affect. Attunement during the client’s emotional experience can serve to release the fixation in these cases. Specific responses for each type of attachment disorder are used in conjunction with eye movement procedures to elevate effectiveness.
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