Rebecca Saunders (00:03.864)
Hello and welcome to the EMDR Doctor podcast. This is a podcast for clients where I share and explore information about all things EMDR.
My name is Dr Caroline Lloyd. I'm a mental health GP and an EMDR practitioner. And my goal is to demystify EMDR or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing to help you on your EMDR journey. EMDR is a powerful therapy which helps to reduce the distress from difficult memories. And my goal is to make it accessible to everyone. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to the EMDR Doctor podcast. I'm coming
to you from Wurundjeri land and I would like to pay my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging. Today I am going to chat a little bit about EMDR and hypnosis mainly because after the Women's Mental Health Conference a couple of weeks ago I've really just been talking my head off about EMDR with lots of great questions coming from all sorts of avenues and this has been one that has come at me a couple of times.
So people often see that I have trained in hypnosis in the past and they want to know is EMDR like hypnosis? they the same thing? It's a great question because both of them use eye movements or hypnosis can use eye movements. EMDR usually uses eye movements and they both have the potential to achieve really marvelous results, but they are very different.
One of the main differences is that EMDR does not change your state of mind. So you're not in an altered state of consciousness with EMDR. You're fully awake, fully alert, and we aim to keep it that way for the whole session. Whereas with hypnosis, the goal is to hypnotize the client and get them into an altered state of consciousness or a very relaxed state in which the brain is more receptive to suggestion.
Rebecca Saunders (02:09.273)
The idea is to modify behaviour with suggestion and it's a process of influencing someone to accept an idea or an impulse or a belief without questioning. So hypnosis is often done with the eyes closed and EMDR is usually done with the eyes open. So with hypnosis, usually the hypnotic state is achieved via relaxation. So the therapist is
aiming to thoroughly relax the client and with EMDR it is just the opposite. So when we start a processing session with EMDR, we actually want to engage the client with the distressing memory, which is quite activating. And then we move through this naturally and end up deactivating the memory through the process of the EMDR session.
So the memory loses its distress through the process of the EMDR. Whereas with hypnosis, the idea is to get the client relaxed, very relaxed and not agitated at all, and then insert some suggestions about the memory. Scientifically speaking, hypnosis alters the brainwave patterns and EMDR does not.
And this was studied very early on in the EMDR research and they monitored the brain responses of EMDR and the brain responses are quite different. So I don't do much hypnosis these days because I really prefer the process of EMDR. And I also used to find that people with high levels of trauma would be very hesitant about going into the hypnotic state.
because that hypnotic state can feel very vulnerable. With trauma, going to sleep or relaxing can be felt as a very dangerous activity to do. And many people with a high trauma load or a huge trauma history will not allow the process of hypnosis. And rightly so, because they need to feel alert and awake and aware in order to protect themselves from potential danger.
Rebecca Saunders (04:30.794)
Not that a therapist who utilizes hypnosis will be a danger to the client, but just life in general, just relaxing that deeply and becoming more conscious of the inner world and less conscious of the external world can feel very, very unsafe and just intolerable to many people.
So with EMDR, we want the eyes to be open and to be moving and for the brain to be working so it can find its way to resolving those difficult memories.
So that's not to say that hypnosis isn't effective. It is. It is effective and studies have confirmed the benefit of hypnosis for trauma. And I have witnessed some marvelous results of hypnosis, but I just prefer EMDR in my practice. I do use some of my skills that I learned in my hypnosis training in order to help my clients be able to relax to the extent that they feel comfortable, but not with
the intent to induce a change of conscious state. And that's just really just informed by the work that I do with mainly pretty complex presentations and in people who have experienced a lot of trauma. One of the other big differences between hypnosis and EMDR is that with hypnosis, the results depend a fair bit on what the hypnotist suggests.
It's kind of a more didactic process. The hypnotist is suggesting various things to the client, which can be great, but it is a more paternalistic approach. And it's kind of like the therapist knows best and is telling the client what to do or how to think or what to let go of and how to do it. And with a skilled therapist, they would discuss all of this with the client beforehand and get to the heart of things pretty quickly. But it is still that
Rebecca Saunders (06:34.606)
kind of didactic approach, which you would think with my medical background would be quite suitable. But personally, I just really love the way that EMDR just sets the stage for the client's brain to work out the best way forward. So with EMDR, the process gives just the right setting for the client to work through things at their own pace to the level of detail that's right for them and figure out what the next step is.
There's a saying amongst EMDR therapists that our best work is done when we get out of the way. And this is so often the case that we just create the right circumstances and then your brain figures out exactly where it needs to go to heal that particular memory in just the right way. So brains have an incredible capacity to heal all by themselves if they're given the right circumstances and
given the right environment to do that and encouragement to do that. Occasionally people do get stuck and the therapist will give a gently guiding suggestion, but this is normally the exception rather than the rule. And whilst as an EMDR therapist, we have an idea of where we would like the process to end up, the journey there is completely under the control of the client.
And for the therapist, it's a process of learning to trust the client's brain to get them where they need to be. So that's a huge difference between hypnosis and EMDR. EMDR is more a process of allowing the client's brain to go where it needs to go. Hypnosis is a matter of inducing that very susceptible state and telling the client where they need to be.
So there's a little bit of intersectionality between hypnosis and EMDR in that the therapist can use their own creativity at some stages in the process. And this is an aspect of both hypnosis and EMDR that I really enjoy. It's a little bit of creativity that we can share with the client or help the client access their own creativity in their own unique fashion to get them unstuck from difficult moments.
Rebecca Saunders (08:55.36)
And it's one of the best facets of EMDR that I really enjoy. So that's a little bit of a crossover between the two. But there are some quite big differences. Another bit of a difference is that EMDR is a whole therapy. So it's an eight phase method of therapy, whereas hypnosis is more just like a tool and that sits within
you know, maybe a psychodynamic kind of an approach to therapy. So hypnosis is more of a tool. EMDR is more of a all-encompassing therapy. So that's probably about it for today. A fairly short podcast for today. But before I go, I'll just mention that I have opened the doors for my November course, my online course. So if you are interested in joining me for a six-week online
group EMDR experience and you are ready to resolve some of your difficult memories and achieve some peace from your past, then head on over to my website emdrdoctor.com.au forward slash heel and we can get things started for you. Hope you have a wonderful week. Until next week. Bye for now.
