# Has anyone ever heard of these treatments?



## 19427 (Dec 16, 2006)

A therapist who contacted me practices these techniques. They sound extremely iffy to me and maybe it is because I am ignorant. I just don't understand any of this so if someone knows what it means please let me know.Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) Francine Shapiro developed an information processing theory stating that the information processing system processes the multiple elements of our experiences and stores memories in an accessible and useful form. Memories are linked in networks that contain related thoughts, images, emotions, and sensations. When a traumatic or very negative event occurs, information processing may be incomplete, perhaps because strong negative feelings or dissociation interfere with information processing. This prevents the forging of connections with more adaptive information that is held in other memory networks. A prime example is the intrusive thoughts, emotional disturbance, and negative self-referencing beliefs of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).Clients focus on their distressing or desired experiences at the same time as they attend to a dual attention stimulus. Eye movements are the most commonly used dual attention stimulus, but tapping, tactile stimulation, and auditory tones are also used. These are usually presented in an alternating bilateral fashion, e.g., first to one ear, then the other, then the first ear, etc. This bilateral stimulation appears to active the brain to be able to process the material through the brain's memory channels.For information on EMDR, go to www.emdr.com.Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) Based on impressive new discoveries involving the body's subtle energies, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) has been clinically effective in thousands of cases for Trauma & Abuse, Stress & Anxiety, Fears & Phobias, Depression, Addictive Cravings, Children's Issues and hundreds of physical symptoms including headaches, body pains and breathing difficulties. Properly applied, over 80% achieve either noticeable improvement or complete cessation of the problem. ...Often works where nothing else will....Usually rapid, long lasting and gentle....No drugs or equipment involved....Easily learned by anyone....Can be self applied.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

I've heard of it, not sure if I've heard of anyone who has really benefited from it other than people on webpages promoting the technique.http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/emdr.html is a skeptical view of this technique.There do seem to be a few small pilot studies that show some benefit, but often they aren't done well enough to give you any real trust that they got the right result.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...t_uids=10225499 seems to show like most other unproven treatments they all do somewhat better than nothing, but then most things do somewhat better than nothing just because having someone who cares that you hurt is better than sitting at home with your problems. While some people think all IBSers are only sick because of some past severe trauma that isn't really true so I'm not sure how getting treated for PSTD would help you if you got your IBS from a GI infection.I'd tend to stick to finding someone that knows the protocols for CBT or HT that work for IBSers, not someone who might try to use other techniques for other disorders assuming that they can tweak it in a way that works.K.


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