EMDR
Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an effective way of helping individuals process and recover from traumatic events and painful memories which are impacting on their mental health.
EMDR is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is also proving useful in the treatment of a wide variety of other mental health issues.
When a person is involved in a traumatic event, they may feel overwhelmed and their brain may be unable to fully process what is going on. The memory of the event seems to become 'stuck' so that it remains very intense and vivid. The person can re-experience what they saw, heard and smelt and the full force of the distress they felt whenever the memory comes to mind. EMDR aims to help the brain 'unstick' and reprocess the memory properly so that it is no longer so intense. It does this by asking the person to recall the traumatic event while they also move their eyes from side-to-side, hear a sound in each ear alternately, or tap on each side of their body. These side-to-side sensations seem to effectively stimulate the 'stuck' processing system in the brain so that it can reprocess the information more like an ordinary memory (EMDR UK website).
See the links below for more information on EMDR.
EMDR Association - Discover EMDR