Testimonials & Results

Professional Testimonials

A “hold” is a physical restraint licensed adults use on children who become a danger to themselves or others. Before receiving EMDR, an 11 year old client of hers was having to be put in a hold an average of 16 times per week, with each hold lasting 45 minutes to 3 hours and taking 5 staff members to hold her. She was also put in an average of 6 seclusions (solitary confinement) per week, each lasting about 30 minutes to an hour. After receiving EMDR, she has not been secluded in 4 months and has gone down to an average of 2 holds every 3 weeks for about 2 minutes each. This little girl was previously attacking people, biting people and throwing furniture that adult staff had a hard time even moving. She hasn’t been on a hold at school for 2 months and her grades are way up and keep improving. She now simply says “I need my buzzys” when she feels activated and she then receives EMDR grounding and she has taught all of the staff at the social service agency to do “monkey taps” (bilateral stimulation) with her.

A 17 year old client has an arson charge (burning down the home she was abused in) and an attempted murder charge and has been blacklisted from every other treatment facility and foster home in the nation (I didn’t even know that was possible, apparently they can’t even laterally move her) and had self injurious behavior that was horrifically intense. She had surgery for a brain tumor and since then has repeatedly reopened the wound and put items ranging from (now banned) marker caps and lollipops to her own teeth she pulled out into her head. She would self harm if she didn’t get what she wanted for dinner. After receiving EMDR, she has had no self injurious behavior for 9 months. The longest she went before the treatment was 6 weeks. She is now graduating high school ahead of schedule and is going to go to college and live on her own. The staff went from asking “how do we keep her alive?” to “where is she going to go to school?” She used to risk infection and death every time she self harmed in those ways and so her therapist claims she would very likely be dead without receiving EMDR. She is now showing no behavioral problems and so doesn’t even meet their criteria for their level of care anymore. Classmates of hers hid objects she could self harm with in the bathroom “in case she wanted to” and she now says to them “I don’t want to do that anymore, that doesn’t serve me.” Recently, after she received some very unfortunate news about her mother, instead of self harming, she began to do slow bilateral stimulation on herself and then said to her therapist, “This is the first time something like that has happened and I don’t want to self harm… It’s the EMDR isn’t it?” She had had 7 years of traditional therapy before this. So, yes, yes, it is.

– EMDR Therapy Training Trainee 2019. Rush, KY.