Does EMDR spell healing?
Even when his wife and four children were safely relocated, Sam couldn t escape this state of near-panic. He became a total insomniac, relying on sleeping pills for rest, obsessively vigilant against threats and increasingly quick to anger. Living this way was intolerable. I had been carrying so much pain for so long, he says, I finally felt I had to do something about it. Sam s doctor referred him to a Belfast psychologist whose treatment made all the difference. After 13 sessions, he was able to put to rest 30 years of ongoing psychological pain. Now it just seems like a memory, he says. Since his treatment, Sam has never discussed his trauma or the therapy that helped to heal him with anyone but his doctor. Speaking now, he seems amazed at how well he truly is. I m not breaking into a cold sweat talking about it. I m not sick. It happened. It s a memory. I can move on. The therapy that helped sam was eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a treatment that involves the
