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| Author |
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| 25 new of 170 responses total. |
bhelliom
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response 37 of 170:
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Jul 1 16:59 UTC 2002 |
What are your thoughts on trying EMDR, John? Do you know yet how it's
supposed to work?
I suppose one of hardest things to do is to know where to begin?
Despite the fact that a lot of the depression discussion can consist
of chicken or egg first arguments sometimes, somtimes it's a matter of
figuring out from which angle to begin, to help you focus on other
things, progressively changing certain learned behaviours. (I don't
know if that made sense to anyone.)
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jep
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response 38 of 170:
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Jul 1 17:58 UTC 2002 |
I've told my therapist I'm all right with trying it. He says he's
worked with it for several years and seen it work a lot. I don't know
how it's going to help me exactly.
He gave me some examples. One was a mid-30's man who broke down and
was unable to stand up to his mother whenever she was critical to him,
going through EMDR and then he was at least able to say "no" to her.
No one knows *how* it works, from what I understand. It just does.
Okay, fine. I can live with that. It's supposed to take feelings that
seem very immediate and move them into a part of your brain where they
seem less immediate.
It won't help me get over what he calls my grief over the divorce. It
could help me get over being unable to control my inappropriate anger.
The problem for me is, I don't consider my anger inappropriate. I
guess I have to get over it anyway. That's a hard part for me.
My depression is pretty specific and situational. I don't think I was
depressed before the divorce came along. I don't know of a good way to
deal with the divorce. That's my whole problem. I guess.
I risk taking over this item and turning it into another divorce item.
I don't want to do that.
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bhelliom
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response 39 of 170:
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Jul 1 19:20 UTC 2002 |
Don't worry, I don't think we'll let that happen. :)
On your anger in general . . . not admitting or not believing that the
anger is inappropriate, I would think, may hinder your ability to make
a success out of the EMDR.
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keesan
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response 40 of 170:
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Jul 1 19:56 UTC 2002 |
Anger is inappropriate when you cannot control it and when expressing it does
not do anybody any good.
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jep
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response 41 of 170:
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Jul 1 21:44 UTC 2002 |
re #39: Right, it is difficult for a therapist to help you solve a
problem you don't want to solve, or don't regard as a problem.
My therapist usually describes EMDR in idyllic terms. I have wondered
what would happen if I asked him to help me get over my inappropriate
inhibitions against attacking someone... surely such things can be used
for different types of goals. I'm sure he would not be willing to help
me in that way, though.
re #40: The anger is inappropriate, or expressing it is inappropriate?
What do you mean by "control"? Control when to feel it? I'm a failure
at that. Control what happens as a result of it? To what degree? I
haven't physically attacked anyone yet, or raised my blood pressure to
the point where I have a stroke. I've said and done things I regretted
because I was angry, both during my current divorce and accompanying
depression, and in the past.
Anger is an emotion. It's just there. It's not right and it's not
wrong. It's a thing to be dealt with, like intelligence or a headache.
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russ
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response 42 of 170:
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Jul 2 01:48 UTC 2002 |
(Reports I've seen have said that EMDR shows zero effectiveness in
trials which compared "correct" therapies versus "wrong" therapies
for the disorder to be treated. You'll get something from the
placebo effect, but that's no reason to pay someone a buncha dough.)
(If you have an ethical problem with feeding scammers, even if it's
your insurance company's money and not yours, avoiding EMDR is probably
a good way to feel better about yourself.)
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keesan
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response 43 of 170:
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Jul 2 01:55 UTC 2002 |
There are more useful ways to react to situations than with anger, whether
or not you act on the anger. Anger can hurt the person feeling it
(interfering with sleep or with doing something to improve the situation) and
expressing it can make things worse. People who get angry assume that the
other person did something specifically to hurt them, when they were probably
just acting to help themselves and did not care much how it affected other
people. It is less stressful if you can just try to forget what they did,
or deal with the consequences without getting angry.
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clees
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response 44 of 170:
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Jul 2 07:58 UTC 2002 |
Anger is an inappropriate emotion? That reminds me of Marge Simpson
when she gives advice to sad, depressed Lisa to push the emotion deep
down to your toes and forget about it. (o yes, I get my ideas from the
magic black box called tv :)
Anger is quite natural as such.
It only depends whether that emotion is justified.
John is right, it's just an emotion.
IMHO storing emotions in another part of the brain with EMDR seems
pretty insensible to me, but I may have an entirely wrong impression of
the process.
I remember I have done RET for awhile.
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bhelliom
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response 45 of 170:
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Jul 2 12:49 UTC 2002 |
Russ, do you have more information on that. Now I'm really curious.
If you just point me to one of the beeter sites . .. or would APA or
like groups be a decent place to start?
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edina
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response 46 of 170:
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Jul 2 13:02 UTC 2002 |
Re 43 Gee - I can't imagine why you aren't a therapist.
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brighn
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response 47 of 170:
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Jul 2 13:18 UTC 2002 |
#44> The father on King of the Hill's advice is much simpler: "Swallow it.
Just swallow it."
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jep
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response 48 of 170:
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Jul 2 13:38 UTC 2002 |
There is very little information on the WWW about EMDR, and I didn't
think any of it was very objective. There are sites which promote it
as an ideal therapy for almost anything, and others which denounce it
as completely without basis (without saying anything about whether it's
effective). My therapist is a proponent who says he's seen it work a
lot; at least I know him somewhat and so I'll go with his opinion.
When I give it a try, I'll bring back a report about what it was like.
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bhelliom
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response 49 of 170:
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Jul 2 17:49 UTC 2002 |
Well, obviously, people respond differently to such therapies as they
do with everything else. Good luck with it, John.
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jep
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response 50 of 170:
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Jul 2 19:48 UTC 2002 |
Thanks!
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russ
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response 51 of 170:
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Jul 3 03:44 UTC 2002 |
Re #45: Try searching csicop.org. Unfortunately all of my back
issues of Skeptical Inquirer are buried pretty deeply (dead trees
are nice for reading, lousy for searching).
Re #48: If you look at the claims for EMDR and the claims once
made for snake oil, they sound eerily similar. Probably for good
reason, too.
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jaklumen
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response 52 of 170:
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Jul 4 13:10 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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jaklumen
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response 53 of 170:
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Jul 4 13:14 UTC 2002 |
((inferno item #7 <----------> recovery item #21))
see also item:19
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jazz
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response 54 of 170:
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Jul 5 20:13 UTC 2002 |
There's no real basis in snake oil - outside of the placebo effect -
and EMDR has a real basis, though it doesn't follow most of the research I've
read in the field, in eye positioning based on emotional states combined with
creating physiological states to influence psychological ones. Insofar as
I can tell, both phenomena are real, and therefore EMDR may have some basis
in fact.
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md
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response 55 of 170:
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Jul 7 14:13 UTC 2002 |
from http://www.quackwatch.com/
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR is promoted for the treatment of post-traumatic stress, phobias,
learning disorders, and many other mental and emotional problems. The
method involves asking the client to recall the traumatic event as
vividly as possible and rate certain feelings before and after visually
tracking the therapist's finger as it is moved back and forth in front
of the client's eyes [6]. EMDR's developer and leading proponent,
Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., received her doctoral degree in 1988 and
established the EMDR Institute to train mental health professionals.
She and her associates have trained more than 22,000 clinicians
worldwide in workshops that in 1997 cost $385 [7]. EMDR resembles
various traditional behavioral therapies for reducing fears in that it
requires clients to imagine traumatic events in a gradual fashion in
the presence of a supportive therapist. However, controlled research
has shown that EMDR's most distinctive feature (visual tracking) is
unnecessary and is irrelevant to whatever benefits the patient may
receive [8]. Recent reviews have concluded that the data claimed to
support EMDR derive mostly from uncontrolled case reports and poorly
designed controlled experiments and that the theory of EMDR clashes
with scientific knowledge of the role of eye movements [9,10].
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jep
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response 56 of 170:
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Jul 8 01:09 UTC 2002 |
re #55: I've read that type of comment about EMDR, but the comment
doesn't address whether it works or not. My therapist claims it does
work. However, I think he's giving up on trying it on me at least to
help with my biggest problem -- anger over my divorce -- since I think
my anger is appropriate and not something that needs to be cured.
So, those who were concerned (from the divorce item) that I was going
for some quack therapy can relax about that. I at least have not tried
it yet.
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jep
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response 57 of 170:
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Jul 8 10:42 UTC 2002 |
There's another article in USA Today, questioning the value of
antidepressants.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/health/drugs/2002-07-08-
antidepressants.htm
The article says tests show they work only 18% better than placebos,
which I expect means they helped 18% of people.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I believe my Zoloft prescription is helping me a
lot with my depression. It hasn't cured everything, but it's given me
a break from hopeless despair to a much more normal state of mind.
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mary
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response 58 of 170:
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Jul 8 10:58 UTC 2002 |
Some of the best and most powerful treatments out there
work because of the placebo effect. So your 18% is probably
far too low an estimate.
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cmcgee
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response 59 of 170:
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Jul 8 11:16 UTC 2002 |
As I recall, placebos work pretty well for depression, so wouldn't that
mean antidepressants work pretty-well+18% ?
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jep
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response 60 of 170:
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Jul 8 13:52 UTC 2002 |
I can believe my own positive effects were a placebo effect, or at
least partly so. I got even more depressed when it looked like it was
going to be a month or two before I could see the psychiatrist who was
to prescribe something for me. I felt a lot of hope once I got the
prescription, and had one terrible day when I forgot to take it, not
long after I'd started. Then I gradually but steadily started feeling
less inescapably down. All of that could as easily be a placebo effect
as a real medical improvement.
I don't care what helped me, though. I've felt a lot better since
taking the Zoloft than I did before that.
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orinoco
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response 61 of 170:
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Jul 8 15:12 UTC 2002 |
There's a variation on the placebo effect -- unfortunately, I don't remember
what it's called -- that might be relevant too. I seem to remember hearing
that a placebo with some tangible but irrelevant effect -- a caffeine pill,
say -- will work better than a totally inactive placebo.
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