EMDR Stories: Women's Journey's of Healing, Health, and Hope is a collection of ten case stories from actual EMDR psychotherapy sessions that focus on different aspects of women’s health.  Each story is preceded by a brief explanation of a mental health topic mentioned in the accompanying story.

What is EMDR?  EMDR is a form of psychotherapy that heals traumatic memories and reduces triggers in the present and future.  It can also be used to reduce certain forms of chronic pain.

How does EMDR work?  To heal a traumatic memory, we need to do two things.  First, we need to desensitize the memory so that it is no longer overwhelming.  We are then able to make new meaning of, or reprocess, the memory from a place of safety in the present, rather than the sense of overwhelm with which we may have first experienced it.  It turns out that if you alternately stimulate the left- and right-hand sides of the brain, it helps with this desensitizing and reprocessing.  This can be done using alternating left and right eye movements; alternately tapping on the left- and right-hand sides of the body; or with alternating left and right audio tones using headphones.  Hence, this approach to psychotherapy is called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR.

How can EMDR reduce pain?  It is normal to hold emotional stress in the body as some form of physical tension.  Meanwhile, tension makes most pain worse.  For example, we avoid clenching our jaw when we have a toothache.  EMDR can help reduce stress, thereby reducing physical tension.  This can lessen some forms of pain.  It is important to acknowledge that EMDR does not treat the underlying medical or physical causes of pain, but it can help reduce the psychological component of pain as well as provide clients with techniques to help better manage pain.

How long does EMDR take?  EMDR psychotherapy is an organic process.  In the course of doing EMDR it is common to discover issues underlying whatever brought you to therapy.  As a result, it is not possible to predict how long EMDR treatment will take.  What we can say is that most people experience some degree of relief within the first few months of treatment. 

Why is this book only about women’s stories of doing EMDR?  The stories in this book are based on actual EMDR psychotherapy sessions Peter did with clients who gave their consent for him to share their stories.  At the time he wrote the stories, he only had female clients.

Does EMDR work better on women than men or transgender individuals?  No.  EMDR has been used effectively all over the world for more than three decades with individuals of all ages, genders, races, ethnicities, and cultural backgrounds.

Does this book contain narratives of traumatic violence?  No.  While the client stories do contain references to traumatic events as well as descriptions of physical and emotional pain as they occurred during actual psychotherapy sessions, Peter only chose stories that do not contain narratives of violence.