S4E19 - The Magic Eyes (EMDR)

0:00 Chris: If you take one thing away from this episode, it's this correlation alone is not enough to say something is scientifically proven. And this is doubly true with human health, because our bodies are insanely complex. And with human mental health, forget about it. And if there's a second takeaway from this episode, it's that you don't always have to be certain or have a take. Saying I don't have enough evidence to decide is not only perfectly fine, it's really good. And that's what I'm saying about EMDR. henous recording. Welcome to culture. Just weird.

0:57 Kayla: We have new patrons. Chris: We do. We have quite a few new patrons, actually. We had an influx of new patrons. Kayla: What are you guys doing? Chris: I know. Please stop spending money on us. You have much better things to spend it on, like Chipotle burritos or psls. Definitely psls. Kayla: Definitely psls. Chris: Actually, is there a way they could support the unionization effort but still get psls somehow? Kayla: Well, just don't go to stores if they're striking. Chris: Oh, yeah. Okay. Kayla: And listen to the workers as to whether or not we're supposed to be boycotting. Is this episode about Starbucks? Chris: It's not. We've already had two of those. We don't need another one. This is cult of. Just weird, though. I'm Chris. I'm a data scientist in game design. I haven't done data science, like, as a job, though, in, like, two years. So should I keep saying you still.

1:51 Kayla: Call yourself a physicist, and it's because you have. Chris: I only say that in private. I only say that in private. Kayla: You have absolutely said it on the show. Chris: Really? Kayla: Yes. Arguing about it on the show? Yes, 100%. Chris: All right, listeners, find me that clip. So I'm sure that. I'm sure Kayla's probably right. Kayla: Yes, I am. Chris: Okay. If that clip exists, please don't send it. Kayla: So that's Chris. He's a physicist, a data scientist, an Eagle scout, and a. Chris: Whatever the fuck I want to say that I am. I'm also a cool guy, you know. Kayla: Let the listeners be the judge of that. I'm Kayla. I do not have as many bonafides. I'm a tv writer, and that's about it. Chris: Welcome to the show. So, as you mentioned, there are three new patrons, so we want to give a shout out and thank you to them today. The first one is Tiny. That's their name on Patreon. I'm assuming it's not their name in real life. I don't know.

2:41 Kayla: Who knows? Chris: Who knows? Could be it's a. It is a good name. They might be Tiny. Kayla: Maybe they're tiny. Maybe they're. Maybe they're really big, and it's a. Chris: It could be really big, like you, like a lot of times. Like Tiny Tim. Wait, no. Tiny Tim was small in nightmare before Christmas. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Wait, who was Tiny Tim in nightmare before Christmas? Kayla: I wasn't. I was making a funny joke. Chris: Oh. Oh, yeah. That was super funny. Kayla: Tiny Tim, the musician, was not tiny. Chris: No, he was big. I feel like there's. Kayla: Anyway, tiny could just also be nothing related to size. And we're, like, scrutinizing and making fun of somebody's. Chris: Well, I just want. Yeah, probably. That's probably what's happening. We're probably being dicks, and then they're gonna be like, you know what? Fuck this. Kayla: I rescind my patreon. Chris: Well, anyway, however long you patronize us on our patreon, thank you so much. We really appreciate your support. And same thing to our next one, which is Dan Malmud. Thank you very much for your support. And then finally, Velm, v e l m. Thank you so much for your support as well. So those are all at the cultist tier, which means they get everything, including bonus content and polls, behind the scenes stuff. And once again, the outtakes are free. You can go listen how shitty we.

3:56 Kayla: Are anytime you want. Chris: Anytime you want, without even paying. Kayla: I really want to. I really want to buy my microphone. I want to put my whole mouth on it right now. I really want to do it. I don't know why. I can't stop thinking about it. I want to really want to do it. Chris: I'm keeping this in the show. I am fucking weirdo. Kayla: All right, do the show. Do this show. Chris: Okay, I'm going. If you can stop. If you cannot bite the microphone, I will do the show. Kayla, I want to try a little experiment today. This is a podcast, so would you agree that we make a better show when we are feeling more relaxed and a little extra creative?

4:37 Kayla: I don't think I've ever felt relaxed or creative. Chris: Okay. But the more of that we feel, the better off we are, right? Kayla: I feel like I'm being led to answer, so I'll say yes. Chris: Okay, well, I think you would probably say yes anyway if you didn't feel one way or the other. It would give us better banter, funnier jokes, weirder pop culture references, right? Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So I looked for a ritual that we could perform that would help with that. Kayla: Okay. Chris: And I came up with this. It's just a. It's just a short breath exercise thing. So first I'm gonna hand you this squeezy ring thing. Kayla: Okay? Chris: It doesn't have to be a squeezy ring thing. It could be like a stress ball or something like that. Kayla: Okay. Chris: For the audience. Yeah, it's just like this little donut made of rubber that you squeeze for an exercise. So hang on to this. We're going to do three deep breaths with some prompts. You're going to picture yourself in a nice, comfy room surrounded by of your favorite art.

5:29 Kayla: Should our listeners be doing this? I guess they could at home, unless they're driving. Chris: Yeah, don't do this if you're driving. Kayla: Follow along with us on our relaxation journey. Chris: So your favorite art would be what, like succession running on a tv on the wall? Right. Or like Marina Abramovich staring at you from a table in the corner? Kayla: The dream. Chris: Okay, ready? Kayla: Yes. Chris: All right, close your eyes on a five count, inhale 12345. Now hold it for another 5 seconds. And while you do, squeeze the ball and picture yourself in a comfy space surrounded by art. It's probably about two one left now. Now exhale and relax your hand. And we'll do that two more times. Inhale, 2345. Picture your art room. Hold three, four, five, and exhale. Last one. Inhale, squeeze the thingy. Picture your art. And exhale. Okay, that's it. Now, what do you think? Will you be extra insightful and funny this episode?

7:09 Kayla: Will I be? Would one be or one be? Chris: I don't know, will you be? Kayla: I can make no promises. I definitely feel a little more relaxed and grounded, but I can make no promises as to the quality of my performance. Chris: Okay. If you want, you can hang onto the ring as like a little dumbo feather too. Kayla: I will. Thank you. Chris: I'll tell you at the end what this technique is called, and I'll be curious at the end of the episode if you feel like it made any difference. Kayla: I am looking forward to that. Chris: Anyway, it's been a while since culture, just weird, has covered wellness oriented topic. We talked about Mt. Jafar and the pseudoscience of dirty genes in the first season. Let's see. I guess anti vax counts as sort of like a wellnessy topic. We've talked about intermittent fasting, and we've talked about team beachbody, MlM. And since this is like a wellness oriented season, I figured it was a good time to dig into a wellness industry topic. Well, actually, wait have we just t count? Have we already done this?

8:15 Kayla: We did tea. We also did tea. Chris: We also did boo. But I also did a whole episode on, like, teal Swan, so. Okay, so actually, it may not be. Kayla: Unique, but it fits in well with theme. Chris: Yeah, actually, I can't really narrow it down. I think I'm actually kind of screwing this up. Hey, Kayla, just look over there. Just look over there. Kayla: Okay. Chris: Don't note it, though. Kayla: Looking over to the left. Chris: Okay. Wait, it's gone. Never mind. Sorry. Look the other way. Kayla: Okay. Chris: You look left. Okay. Sweet. You just did an EMDR, which. Which is the topic of today's show. Kayla: I guess I did. Chris: My sources for this episode include default, of course, wikipedia, bless your existence, Scientific American. Sciencebasedmedicine.org online home of friend of the show doctor David Gorski Reddit boards dot straightdope.com, which I just discovered was like a place where people go to kind of like, ask questions.

9:10 Kayla: They're like, straight dope. Chris: Give me the straight dope. No bullshit. Insider.com, comma, the Mayo clinic, the American Psychological association, the BMJ, which is the british medical journal, Google search trends, and myself. I actually underwent an EMDR treatment a little over a week ago myself. We will get to that. Starting with the basics. EMDR is an acronym, of course, and it stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. And the little joke intro we did like a minute ago is actually not too far from the truth of what happens in an EMDR session. Eye movement back and forth at a relatively rapid pace directed by your practitioner. In between the prompted left right eye movement, there's some closing of the eyes.

10:02 Chris: And during the whole thing, you're invited to picture in your mind's eye a specific scene from your past, a memory, and let your intuitive mind sort of take the wheel and envision whatever comes up. And of course, since this is a mental health therapy modality, the thing you're invited to envision is something unpleasant, something that is perhaps, quote unquote, stuck in your psyche in some manner that is deleterious to your overall state of mind. In fact, one of the major claims for EMDR over something like traditional talk therapy is that it's good for PTSD victims and people with complex PTSD. And the difference between that is that PTSD is generally associated with, like, one really traumatic event, whereas, like, complex PTSD is like repeated traumas.

10:50 Kayla: It's like a natural disaster that strikes versus an abusive childhood. Chris: Right. Thank you for that example. So perhaps you're a veteran who witnessed one of the unspeakable horrors that's so common in war. And that memory is lodged deep within you, causing all manner of PTSD symptoms. You're irritable, you maybe have intrusive thoughts about the traumatic event, trouble sleeping, always on edge, even when you're perfectly safe. By the way, those are among actual PTSD symptoms, and PTSD is tough to treat. So the idea behind EMDR is that it is purposefully exposing yourself to the painful and or terrifying memories in a controlled setting with a trained practitioner. And then there's also some magic that happens with the eye movement thing.

11:37 Kayla: Magic. Chris: Now, before we talk about magic eyes, there are a few things I need to mention here. One is that EMDR need not involve bilateral eye movement. It typically does, but other types of so called bilateral stimulation are alleged to have similar effects. So, not just bilateral eye movement, but also, like, tapping back and forth on either shoulder or either arm of the patient, or listening to binaural audio as well, where, like, volume and content sort of pulse back and forth between a pair of headphones. But the eye movement thing is most common, and that's the one that I did. I think that's the one you did as well. Cause you did this. Kayla: I have also done an EMdr session. Year and a half ago, maybe.

12:21 Chris: Oh, wow. A year ago feels less than that. Was that long ago? Kayla: Yeah. Chris: I don't know. Time's messed up. Kayla: Year ago, I think. Year and a half ago at this point. I think it was last summer. And. Yeah, it was with the same practitioner, and it was the same style of. Yeah, your head remains stationary, and your eyes simply follow the, like, hand directions of the practitioner. Chris: Yeah. And then she. Did she do the same thing? She kind of guided you through some, like, light guidance? Through some. Yeah, it was like vision questing. Kayla: Close your eyes and, you know, picture something, what's coming up for you. Okay. You know, we're gonna go through this process and taking you through whatever you're picturing and then kind of moving on to the next picture and just kind of whatever was coming up at the time is what we processed in the session.

13:08 Chris: Yeah. And the guidance is very light touch. It's like. It's not like, picture this. It's more like if something comes up, it comes up. You can tell me about it. You can keep silent. You can do whatever you want. Kind of just let whatever happens. All right, so, to summarize everything we just talked about, here's the definition. Given by the American Psychological Association, a structured therapy that encourages the patient to briefly focus on the trauma memory while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation, typically eye movements, which is associated with a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the trauma memories. End quote. So that's pretty concise.

13:50 Kayla: Pretty concise. Chris: Also, since I described EMDR as purposefully exposing yourself to painful and or terrifying memories, this is also a good time to bring up the fact that EMDR is far from the first or only therapy modality to use such techniques. There's a whole slew of things that fall under the exposure therapies category, and they all have this thing in common where you're either gradually or suddenly. I mean, in some way, you are exposed to the triggering stimulus in a controlled setting until that trigger has either been desensitized or you've processed or recontextualized or whatever. Have you? In fact, I think that's. I believe that's a common way for treating phobias. Like, if you have a fear of heights, exposure therapy might involve, like, going to the top of progressively taller buildings or something like that. You get the picture.

14:42 Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Exposing yourselves to spiders. If you have arachnophobia, if you have. Kayla: Agoraphobia, you gotta go outside. You gotta go to crowded places. Chris: Yeah, no, go outside. I don't wanna go outside unless you do. Ugh. Unless it's to get a PSO. All right, so traditional CBT talk therapy and CBT stands for cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT therapy. Cognitive. Kayla: That's one of those things. Chris: That's one of those. Redundant acronym Ras syndrome. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Anyway, CBD talk therapy, which is well supported scientifically, and thus the most common therapy treatment, can also involve exposure. Like, one of the things that CBT. Like, one of the many types of CBT is exposure talk therapy. So in CBT, though, the exposure would involve discussing the traumatic event with your therapist. There's not that much discussion in EMDR. It's just like you envision something as therapist sort of talks to you. There's some back and forth, but it's mostly just like the act of picturing the thing in your mind's eye and the act of the bilateral stimulation.

15:49 Kayla: You're not analyzing it with language and trying to figure out, yeah, that's a good way to know what cognitive distortions are happening. Like, it's less of a verbal analytical processing practice and more of like it feels. Chris: It's more like experiential. Kayla: Yeah. It's like almost a nonverbal processing that occurs, like a very emotional processing that occurs, which is why I even think that this is something that works well as a topic for us, because it still feels like that feels a little woo to me. Chris: It feels that way to a lot of people, actually. Yeah, I read a lot of comments. In fact, I just mentioned the straight dope website. It was actually someone asking about EMDR and saying, like, this just sounds woo to me. Like, what's the straight dope on Emdr? So it sounds like.

16:43 Kayla: Sounds the straight dope. I want to know, as somebody who has done EMDR, I still don't know where I stand on this. And like, I don't, you know, I had a very positive experience with it. I really think I got something very powerful out of it. I don't know if it's real. Like, I don't know what the science is behind it. I don't know what. I looked at this as a topic for myself at one point and I backed off of it because, I mean, we can get into those reasons later. I don't wanna scoop you, but I felt like I couldn't get my hands around this thing. Chris: Let's definitely get to that. I wanna hear your experiences after we ensure that you don't spoil the rest.

17:24 Kayla: I don't want to spoil the episode. Sorry, you can cut any of that out. Chris: No, no. I think that's important context, because that's, that is how it, like, when I started into it, too, I had the same feeling of like, okay, wait, what is this? Like, is this crazy woo? Or is this like super science? Kayla: Like, right. It feels like it's somehow both kind. Chris: Of like, in this weird. And I think that. I hope that by the end of this episode you'll have a better understanding of why that is. Kayla: Okay. Chris: I definitely tapped into the old trust network. I went deep in the trust network for this one. Kayla: Remind me to tell you about the most woo thing I found about this. That probably didn't come up in your research because I came at it from, like, remind me. Remind me. Okay, remind me. This is foreshadowing for later in the episode.

18:14 Chris: Foreshadowing. All right, so what were just talking about, though, is how EMDR is simply one form of exposure therapy. It's not much talking or reframing. It's mostly about visualization. And then the secret sauce for EMDR is the aforementioned bilateral stimulation, the eye movement in the acronym. Kayla: And what does that mean? Bilateral? What is being stimulated? So the idea bilaterals are being bi stimulated. Chris: Your biceps are being laterally stimulated. Kayla: Are you stimulating your lats, by doing something with your biceps? Is that what? Chris: Right. Kayla: This is about working out. Chris: It's about skipping leg day, specifically. Kayla: Gotcha.

18:54 Chris: Because you want huge guns and nobody gives a shit about your life to. Kayla: Fight off any demons that you have. Chris: Exactly. Kayla: Okay. Chris: Yep. Kayla: We just invented a new form of therapy. Chris: Okay, if you're still with us, bilateral stimulation actually means just physically stimulating either side of your body because your nerves are connected to your different hemispheres of your brain. And so the idea, which we'll get into this a little bit, but the idea is that by physically stimulating, either by tapping or eye movements or whatever, the different hemispheres of your brain have to be activated. And then that's somehow in conjunction with recalling these traumatic events, helps process them.

19:37 Kayla: So it goes, trauma occurs. Move your eyes, question mark. Question mark. Question mark. Healing. Chris: Exactly. I think I even say that later in the episode, the end. You guys got it. Okay. But, yeah, so that's what EMDR is and what it tends to be used for. That PTSD we mentioned. But where did it come from? How long has it been around? Kayla: Where is it going? Chris: Where is it going? Where are we all going? EMDR was invented or discovered, depending on how you think about these things. In 1987, by a psychologist by the name of Francine Shapiro. She actually came to this invention slash discovery by noticing that she herself felt better after thinking about her own traumas and having her eyes move back and forth. Why did she have her eyes moving back and forth? I think the story goes is that she was on a hike, so her eyes kept, like, darting back and forth to look at, like, nature and animals.

20:38 Kayla: And I thought she was walking around camping. Chris: Whatever else happens on a hike, maybe it was camping or camping. Camping, camping. Or campus. Either way, she was on a walk. Kayla: Maybe it was walking somewhere and her eyes were looking at things, right? There's mythology around this. Chris: And I guess, for whatever reason, she was thinking about something shitty that happened to her and later felt better. And as you just said, it sounds a little like a myth making narrative to me. Like, you know, like, I was. I was walking down the blah, blah, and then the burning bush came to me and said I was sitting. Kayla: Under a tree and an apple fell down, and then. Question mark, question mark. Gravity. Chris: Right, exactly. But regardless, her claim was that she discovered this effect in herself first, and then Wikipedia tells us, quote, she then conducted a scientific study with trauma victims in 1988, and the research was published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress in 1989. Her hypothesis was that when a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm normal coping mechanisms with the memory and associated stimuli being inadequately processed and stored in isolated memory networks. Shapiro noted that when she was experiencing a disturbing thought, her eyes were involuntarily moving rapidly. She further noted her anxiety was reduced when she brought her eye movements under voluntary control. While thinking about a traumatic thought, Shapiro developed EmDR therapy for post traumatic stress disorder. She speculated that traumatic events upset the excitatory inhibitory balance in the brain, causing a pathological change in the neural elements.

22:15 Chris: Please don't ask me what that last sentence means. I have no idea. It kind of comes off as jargon salad to me. But anyway. Francine Shapiro, inventor of Emdrhe 1987, it's taken off more recently, though. If Google search trends are to be taken as an indicator of interest, then a shift happened roughly in 2015 where searches were, like, relatively flat before that, and then the number started going up, a trend that continues into now, into 2022. Kayla: What caused that surge? Chris: I am not sure. If I had to speculate, it happened. Kayla: In 2015, that everyone was suddenly like, I have trauma. I need help. It was 2015. It was a good year.

22:56 Chris: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. Maybe it was more 2016. I don't know. If I had to speculate, I'd say it coincides with some larger societal trends, like in the growth of the wellness industry over the last decade. But several articles I read also mentioned it's growing increase in popularity as well. So I guess it exists, right? Like it does. It is growing in popularity. As to why not, super sure. The one thing I can say is that it probably wouldn't be increasing in popularity if it didn't work. Right, right. Okay, sorry. As we know on this show, something absolutely does not have to work for it to gain popularity and sales, especially in America in the year five AFF, which of course stands for five years after Fyre festival.

23:49 Chris: We're not exactly in an environment where, like, the good, effective things rise to the top. Scam world sometimes feels like the opposite. Kayla: Everything's a scam. Everything's a scam. Even things that aren't scams. It's all a scam. But I don't know. Chris: This podcast is a scam. Kayla: This podcast is absolutely a scam. And again, I just. I don't know what to think about EMDR because it genuinely helped me. And I also think it might be fake. Chris: Yeah, I think so. All I'm saying here is that just because it's gained in popularity is not by itself an indicator that it works. Especially now. Kayla: Right. Chris: All that being said, though, it appears as though EMDR actually does have some empirically proven effectiveness. Okay, maybe. Okay, probably. We think.

24:38 Kayla: All right. Helpful. Chris: It's complicated. Let's get into it. If you take one thing away from this episode, it's this correlation alone is not enough to say something is scientifically proven. And this is doubly true with human health, because our bodies are insanely complex. And with human mental health, forget about it. So there are lots of things out there where there's evidence that a treatment, quote unquote, works, but the mechanism isn't really understood or it's left vague or can't be shown at all. And if you can't describe a viable mechanism, you just can't say for sure that a causes b. So what does this have to do with EMDR? Well, the thing is, EMDR does actually have a lot of evidence to back up its effectiveness as a treatment. There are plenty of studies that show a correlation between EMDR treatments and recovery and its recipients.

25:39 Chris: And there's a laundry list of organizations to back up that backup. Starting in 2003, the Dutch National Steering Committee guidelines mental health and care. That's a mouthful. Recommended EMDR for treating trauma. The American Psychiatric association in 2004 added it to its recommended treatments for trauma. In 2005, NICE. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence did the same. Nice. In 2007, the Australian center for Post Traumatic Mental Health. 2009, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies Practice guidelines categorized EMDR as an evidence based level a treatment for PTSD in adults. Also in 2009, the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies added EMDR to its recommended list. The us departments of Veterans affairs and Defense began recommending it in 2010. Sam hams. I'm just going to spell it, Sam HSA, which is the substance abuse and mental health Services Administration, began recommending it in 2011.

26:46 Chris: The World Health Organization in 2013. And finally, the American Psychological association conditionally recommends EMDR for the treatment of PTSD, which I just learned for this episode that the American Psychological association is a different organization than the American Psychiatric association. Kayla: Too many organizations. Chris: There's so many organizations, and I doubt they're very organized. Eh? Anyway, are you. That was a great reaction there. Kayla: Awesome finger guns. Chris: Are you convinced yet, Kayla? Kayla: I am not. And can I tell you why?

27:27 Chris: You may. Kayla: There's a couple reasons. So, first, I don't want to put on a tinfoil hat here. I don't want to do that. I really don't want to do that. Chris: And yes, I'm not tinfoil hat, but. Kayla: I think, for me, it takes more than recommendations from large governing bodies for something to enter into my trust network. It can't just be that because, I don't know. Are health insurance companies involved in this? Because health insurance companies are involved in things like acupuncture and chiropractics becoming super accepted in the mainstream. And again, I'm somebody who has engaged in both of those things. Don't think that they are, quote unquote, efficacious by the standards of this podcast, by the quote unquote scientific standards of this podcast. So I just, I don't know what the motivation is behind all of that. I don't know. Maybe this is something that's like, is it cheap or is it effective? I don't know what.

28:33 Kayla: I also have a hard time with this, and this is part of why I didn't do an episode on this and why it was too scary for me to do an episode on. And thank you for taking one for the team and doing it instead. Chris: Yay. I'm gonna recommend somebody do something that's either dangerous or dangerous if they don't do. Kayla: I really liked my EMDR session. I had a hard time finding any authority on EMDR, like, somebody, the people who were doing research on its efficacy and publishing papers about its efficacy and really looking into and analyzing the, like, effectiveness of this thing. I had a hard time finding anybody who wasn't an EMDR practitioner themselves. Yeah, there didn't seem to be any sort of like that. I could find third party authority of people who, like, weren't making their money from practicing EMDR. And that, to me, is what makes it so complicated is, like, I want to trust the scientific research that's being done on this thing, but I have a harder time trusting it when the people doing the scientific research are founders of EMDR, practitioners of EMDR, publishers of EMDR journals, and making their money on this thing.

29:43 Chris: Do these large organizations count for you as a third party? Kayla: I feel like I need something else. I need there to be, I need the Perelman school of Medicine to be studying this. I need Johns Hopkins University to be studying this, to be actually publishing research that they're doing. I think that some of these other organizations that you talked about are organizations that take input right from outside places. Chris: Right. They're not themselves laboratories. Kayla: Here's what we recommend. They're not necessarily doing the research themselves. So that's why I will have questions about why are you choosing to support EMDR versus something else versus something else. So it just gets really complicated when it seems like all of the research, or at least the research that I found, that says, yes, EMDr is an effective modality, is coming from people doing it.

30:37 Chris: Yeah, I think your instincts are pretty good here, and, in fact, we'll talk about acupuncture here more in a minute, but I think your instincts are in the right direction. Kayla: So I should keep my tinfoil hat on? Chris: So keep the tin foil hat on. Kayla: I don't want to keep the tinfoil hat on. It doesn't make me good at being. Chris: It's not very stylish. Kayla: An unbiased podcast host. I feel like I'm just one of the crazy people. Chris: No, look. Okay, half on, half off, tilt it to the side, turn it around like one of those baseball caps. All right, so there are lots of correlative studies, and again, correlative just means, like, well, people did it, and then they felt better. Kayla: Right? Chris: And lots of weighty organizations getting behind it. But this brings us back to what were talking about a few minutes ago, and what you may have been wondering since we first started talking about it. How the hell does moving your eyes back and forth actually do anything or make any difference?

31:31 Kayla: I still don't know. And again, it really helped me. Chris: How does EMDR actually work? The good news is, this is easy to answer. Kayla: We don't know the end by. Chris: There is a lot of speculation about what the mechanism is, but nothing that we actually know for sure. And by mechanism, just to be clear, I mean some way of describing a causal chain of events between the treatment and its efficacy. We can describe, for example, how caffeine causes alertness and other effects in, like, a really precise, biomechanical way. Right? It binds to the same neuron receptors that a naturally occurring neurotransmitter called adenosine does, and blah, blah. Several complicated biochemistry steps later, this causes you to feel tired, but we can actually trace what that chemical does, where it binds, and why that affects you. In this tiredness alertness sort of way. We can point to all those steps with EMDR. It's more like what you were saying before, like underwear, question mark. Profit thing. Right. EMDR, question mark. Feel better?

32:42 Chris: So the speculation on the question mark abounds, but usually it takes the form of something like your two brain hemispheres becoming stimulated rapidly in succession, back and forth via the eye movement or tapping or whatever helps you process whatever it is you're visualizing in some manner. According to the Journal of EMDR, Practice and Research, Francine Shapiro herself posited that when a traumatic or very negative event occurs, information processing of the experience and memory may be incomplete. The trauma causes a disruption of normal adaptive information processing, which results in unprocessed information being dysfunctionally held in memory networks. Now, if that all sounds kind of hand wavy, that's because it is. We just don't know for sure. And not knowing for sure includes the very real possibility that the eye movement actually does nothing at all. In fact, it's more than possible.

33:42 Chris: It is probable, according to doctors Hal Arkowitz and Scott Lillenfield, writing for Scientific American in 2012, when scientists have compared EMDR with imaginal exposure. So that's just like what you're doing in EMDR, just minus the eye movements. They have found few or no differences. Nor have they found that EMDR works any more rapidly than imaginal exposure. Most researchers have taken these findings to mean that EMDR's results derive from exposure, because this treatment requires clients to visualize traumatic imagery repeatedly. Last, researchers have found scant evidence that the eye movements of EMDR are contributing anything to its effectiveness. When investigators have compared EMDR with a fixed eye movement condition, one in which clients keep their eyes fixed straight ahead, they have found no differences between conditions.

34:39 Chris: In light of those findings, the panoply of hypotheses invoked for EMdR's eye movements appears to be explanations in search of a phenomenon. And they cap off their article by writing, not a shred of good evidence exists that EMDR is superior to exposure based treatments that behavior and cognitive behavior therapists have been administering routinely for decades. Paraphrasing british writer and critic Samuel Johnson, Harvard University psychologist Richard McNally nicely summed up the case for EMDR. What is effective in EMDr is not new, and what is new is not effective, end quote. Kayla: So maybe it's not anything to do with the movements. It's just exposure therapy. We just know that exposure therapy is effective.

35:26 Chris: Yeah, exposure therapy is effective. And EMDR adds a little garnish. It adds a little dumbo feather. Kayla: I do want to say something about EMDR and something that is probably under research. We probably don't have much, if any, research about it. I wonder if something like EMDR or another pseudoscientific or woo therapy modality tapping, like the EFT emotional freedom technique. Tapping, which is another thing that is. It's not another thing. It is a thing that is not necessarily based in science, but it's like, oh, tapping on certain areas of your body while you think about things helps you process them, which is another thing that I've done and found effective, but still go, oh, that's. Woo.

36:11 Kayla: I just, I wonder, I would be really interested to see research on these things specifically for treating neurodivergent patients, particularly patients with, like, ADHD, because that's something that I found that I liked about tapping and that I liked about EMDR, is that having a physical activity at the same time as doing like, thinky therapy stuff, that is something that I felt was very helpful to me as somebody with ADHD. It was like sometimes sitting and meditating or sitting and talking does not feel effective to me because it is. I'm just getting my, like, ADHD triggered that whole time. If I'm trying to sit still, sitting still is not good therapy for me. It's not good anything for me. Sitting still is not good for me. It is distressing.

36:58 Chris: Doing a podcast, not good. Kayla: I have to be doing stuff at the same time. You gave me a little thing to squeeze. Guess what I've been doing the whole time? I've been squeezing it and playing with it, because I gotta be doing something else. And so I just, I wonder if. Chris: Something like, almost like I did that intentionally. Kayla: I know. I wonder if something like EMDR are tapping, if we researched it in a neurodivergent context, if there would be some difference there. Because I would venture to say that the quotes that you just read and the research that you just read are probably not accounting for neurodivergence. Generally. Things like this are not accounting for neurodivergence. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: And I'm not a scientist. I'm just saying I wonder, I would like to see something like this from a personal anecdotal experience. I thought that this was helpful for my ADHD.

37:42 Chris: Sure. And there's a lot of anecdotes. There's a lot of anecdotes like that. There's a lot of people who say, like, nothing else worked, and then this did. So. And I think you're absolutely right, even outside of the neurodivergence thing, which I think is like a really good point, but I feel like there's something maybe to, and this is totally a feeling, right. And it's maybe not supported by the research, but there's something to, like the totem aspect of it. There's something to having a ritual, like a ritual, something to help you focus. It's almost like having a catalyst in a chemical reaction. It's not involved in the reaction, but it helps the reaction proceed.

38:24 Kayla: Right. Chris: So I don't know if that's something that's, like, accountable for. Like, I don't know if that's something you can actually account for in research. Kayla: Right. Chris: But that's what it feels like to me. Like, yeah, I don't. Maybe the. The eye movements are not effective, but we'll actually get to that in just a second. Kayla: It also might just make it less scary, like the thought of sitting still and like, if EMDR is something that makes exposure therapy more accessible to people with PTSD. Cause the idea of sitting and thinking about your triggers, that's terrifying to be like, I'm going to sit. Chris: I was nervous about it. I was like, I don't really want to go. Like, I was like, well, I have to sit for an hour and fucking think about this shit.

39:08 Kayla: And maybe if the sitting had simply been sitting and thinking, or physically being exposed to whatever you're triggers are in the moment, maybe that would have turned you off of the session and you wouldn't go back. But maybe having something that feels, that almost distracts you from it a little bit. Chris: Yeah, it's like a handhold. Kayla: Yeah. And again, I don't want to. I'm not arguing against the research at all. I fully believe that the research that we have does not show effectiveness of the moving of the eyes. I just wonder, it makes me curious as to why the anecdotal experiences are there, that it is effective.

39:49 Chris: And look, it's also, we'll get to this, but it's also relatively young, so, you know, it's really tough. With the human body as complex as it is, and like, the diversity of people's genetic makeup, experiences, memories, everything, something that may not be effective. And this is me speaking as a data scientist, something that doesn't appear effective or shows a trend in one direction or another across a large population. As soon as you slice that population, like you mentioned, into neurodivergent, not neurodivergent, suddenly those trends reverse and it looks like one way for one and one way for the other. So I don't know how much slicing of that has been done. Maybe a lot, maybe a little. Probably not as much as has been done for something that's been around for 100 years.

40:39 Kayla: Right, right. So it's the reason why we say like, oh, CBT is the most effective form of talk therapy. Part of that, I think, is because it's just had been around very long and had like, why Prozac is like one of the most effective drug. Well, it's also been around the longest, had a lot of people. And the other thing I want to say, and then I will let you get back to your script. Chris: Oh, you'll let me do the episode? Thanks a lot. Kayla: You're welcome. Is that I think that on the flip side, something like adding the eye movement desensitization and what is it? Reprocessing and reprocessing to an already existing therapy also kind of feels like a page out of the woo scammer grifter textbook. Like, oh, yeah, you gotta move your eyes in this way, and that'll finally make this thing work. It kind of feels like adding a super simple.

41:30 Chris: If it does, though, like you were saying, like, what if. What if you were someone who just couldn't focus, couldn't sit still, couldn't deal with thinking about something for an hour straight? And so what if this magical little. That's why I keep saying dumbo feather, right? What if the dumbo feather actually works in this case? So I love the Dumbo feather now. I use it all. It's, like, one of my favorite tropes. Kayla: It is a very good trope. I just want to point out. Chris: Do you think people listening know Dumbo feather? Kayla: I think our listeners know about a dumbo feather. Dumbo thought he couldn't fly, so then the little mouse guy gave him a feather and said, well, this feather will help you fly. Chris: Yeah. The feather is a magical feather that will allow you to fly. But he was actually flying on his own. But he needed the feather as, like, a little totem, a little thing to.

42:13 Kayla: Focus on and tell the feather he didn't need it in the end, and then he could fly. And yay. Confidence. I just want to point out the flip side here. I don't want to be the person that's like, EmDR works because the man hasn't done enough research into it. It's also, I wonder if it's just, it's possible that there's a grift here of, like, there's an existing thing, and somebody sees an opportunity to put a spin on it that makes it more branded, that makes it more marketable. Cause it is a thing. Like, you have to get trained in the EMDR in the specific thing. Chris: That's actually one of the complaints about it. Like, one of the things that detractors say is that, like, there's too much training involved, and you spend a lot. Kayla: Of money on that training. Chris: You spend a lot of money on the training. So we'll get to some of that.

42:55 Kayla: Okay, I will be quiet. Chris: Thank you. Like, forever or just for the show. Kayla: For as long as you need me to be. Chris: Oh, okay. Like, how about forever? Kayla: Okay. Chris: Is that good? Okay. The confusion and controversy around the effectiveness of EMDR meant that I really had to go to some of the pillars in my trust network, Scientific American, as we just pulled from. And also, luckily for me, sciencebasedmedicine.org had an article. If you are a longtime listener and that website rings a bell to you, congratulations. That's because friend of the show doctor David Gorski is a managing editor there. The author of this particular article, though, is doctor Steven novella, who, in addition to being a good person to weigh in on brain shit because he's a neurologist, is also the founder and executive editor of sciencebasedmedicine.org dot. He also hosts the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast and also finds time to be the president of the New England Skeptical Society.

43:51 Chris: I think he's also a professor at some, like shit school called Yale or something. Kayla: Ugh, fucking Yale. Chris: Anyway, here's what doctor Novella has to say. Or actually, maybe I should just read the article title. EMDR and acupuncture selling non specific effects. End quote. His thesis here is basically that both EMDR and acupuncture fall under the same pseudoscience adjacent gray area, because while there is evidence of therapeutic effectiveness, there is no evidence for either practice that it has anything to do with anything other than therapeutic interaction. In other words, acupuncture helps because you have a nice, supportive practitioner to talk to in a relaxing therapeutic environment, not because of the needles. And this is borne out by studies showing that similar therapeutic effects are observed whether needles are placed in specific acupuncture locations or just placed randomly. And also, there's no significant difference in effectiveness if toothpicks are used to poke the skin instead of needles puncturing it.

44:57 Chris: So it works, but it's not the needles. Kayla: I would like to do the toothpick thing. I also have very much enjoyed acupuncture, and I think it has, I've had great benefits from it, but I believe the science on it as well. Chris: Right, but that's what Doctor novella means by selling a nonspecific effect, right? It's. There is an effect, but it's not specific to the thing that you're saying that it is. Kayla: Okay. Chris: And the analogy is pretty good with EMDR, honestly, because it's basically a CBT adjacent exposure. Talk therapy, you have a practitioner that guides you through recalling traumatic experiences, but studies trying to control for the talk therapy part of it and varying the ritual part, for example, just having the patient stare straight ahead rather than do any eye movement, just don't find any differences. Again, what is effective in EMDR is not new, and what is new is not effective. Doctor Novella also points out that as a neurologist, the known plasticity that the brain has, which is the ability to rewire its neurons, basically doesn't work as fast as EMDR claims it would. So EMDR proponents and patients claim, like, almost instant relief in many cases, or like day after relief from their symptoms.

46:15 Chris: And according to Doctor Novello, the brain just doesn't plasticize, or whatever the word is, it doesn't do it that quickly. Kayla: Interesting. Chris: It's a more gradual process. So, like, if, you know, you do like a dozen CBT sessions or something versus like one or two sessions. Kayla: It's just so interesting because I had one EMDR session and I still have marked changes in how I relate to a specific memory and I. Placebo effect. I don't know. Chris: It's tough to say. It's, you know, again, could because we'll get to this, but it could just be it's new and there's a mechanism we don't understand yet.

46:55 Kayla: Right. Chris: Here's one more quote from that science basedmedicine.org article before moving on. What contribution, if any, does the actual EMDR have? The research has not clearly established that the eye movements are having a specific neurological or psychological effect. Perhaps it's just all the other components of therapy that is having the perceived effect. And yet EMDR has been widely accepted as a treatment modality. This acceptance seems premature, end quote. So again, not bunk, but premature. So totally, it's like a fake, right?

47:36 Kayla: I don't know. Chris: Yes. Kayla: Yes. The science does not. The science does not currently support its claims. How about that? Chris: Yeah, that's the thing. It's not so clear cut. Right? And we've talked about that now the last ten minutes. Here's the thing. As we've mentioned, EMDR is still relatively new on therapeutic scene as a treatment. So it is very possible that the effect has been discovered, but we just don't know the mechanism yet. The studies that show no difference between exposure therapy with and without eye movement seem to contradict this. But the science is still young and incomplete on EMDR, and I think that's part of why there's controversy. And for that matter, effects are frequently discovered before mechanisms like we knew of the correlation between rats and bubonic plague long before we discovered the germ theory of disease. Right, right.

48:30 Chris: So, in my non expert podcaster's opinion, personally, I am skeptical, but ultimately, I don't know for sure, and there's just not enough evidence to judge yet. And if there's a second takeaway from this episode, it's that. It's that you. You don't always have to be certain or have a take. Saying I don't have enough evidence to decide is not only perfectly fine, it's really good. And that's what I'm saying about EmdR, you know, but probably fake, though. Kayla: I don't know. I really enjoyed my session. Chris: I did, too. In fact, I'll talk about it just briefly here. Really thinking about it, my session feels kind of similar to the overall conclusions in the podcast here. Was it nice to sit with a trained, supportive listener? Yes. Did I feel better afterwards? You betcha. Can I tease apart the causal factors from each other? Definitely. 100% cannot. I can't even tease apart the independent effects of the trauma exposure and the eye movements. And I have, like, four other mental health interventions that I'm presently using.

49:41 Kayla: Right. Chris: One of the psychiatric drugs I'm taking has just changed. To be clear, I'm on a new one, and the EMDR practitioner told me afterwards to go spend some time at the beach, because her office is just, like, a few minutes away from a beach. So, yeah, I was feeling pretty good that day, but I have no idea how much, if any, of that was due specifically to the bilateral eye stimulation. Kayla: I think for me, it also was like I was in this environment. I was going into it knowing I specifically want to change this thing that is distressing me, and I am ready for it to be changed. I am ready for it to be different. The. Where my session was with this practitioner, it was, again, it was a year and a half ago, so, like, kind of deep pandemic. It was outside. She had put together a, like, outside garden therapy place to have therapy, where there was, like, a beautiful fountain that you could hear, and chimes were going and, like, butterflies and birds and bees were flying around and. Yeah, it wasn't that far from the ocean, so it had a lovely breeze coming through. Like, it was just a very lovely and relaxing setting.

50:50 Kayla: That, again, I can't say that the effects that I've experienced weren't placebo, weren't, because I went, I want this thing to be different. I'm having this relaxing experience, and now the things are gonna be different. Chris: Yeah. And we haven't talked about the intentionality part of it yet. That was a really good point, too. Right. Like, there's something to be said for the fact that you were already willing and wanting to have some sort of change in regards to these specific memories. Kayla: Right. Chris: And so again, not saying that it doesn't work, just saying that it's, is it specific to this thing? Can I draw a causal link between this because there's so many different exposure therapies. Right. Like, who knows if doing another one of those types of exposure therapies would have had the same effectiveness. Right, right. And so in science, it's, you know, that's why we do science is because there is a lot of, like, who knows? I don't know if this is like, we try to control for these things so that we can say, like, aha, this is the thing that works. Let's focus on that. Right. Let's do more of that. Let's, you know, let's do different flavors of that. Let's combine that with other things that we've discovered that do work. Right.

52:00 Chris: So that's kind of what we're going, what we're talking about here is like, the specificity of this interaction. Kayla: And I think also with EMDR, there's a little bit, because it is kind of woo adjacent. There is a little bit of a, like, spiritual feeling component to it. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Maybe feels more attractive or more efficacious or more profound. Then, like, if I just went to the psychiatrist and he did a CBT therapy session on me and we thought about going to the grocery store, like, not to deny going to the grocery. Chris: Store is pretty true. Kayla: Some people have really, that's like a, there's a guy following TikTok who's documenting his exposure therapy journey. And what he does is every day he goes to a different store and just walks through the store because that is like an overwhelming experience for him.

52:50 Chris: Interesting. Kayla: And absolutely do not want to denigrate that experience. Chris: I do. Kayla: If it's funny, don't denigrate anybody's experience in that way. I just think that if maybe if somebody is seeking some spiritual healing element as well, they're going to maybe be drawn towards the EMDR versus a non EMDR type of therapy. Chris: Yeah, I think that's another good point. All right, so to summarize the controversy here, arguments for EMDR having some uniquely effective component, there are studies showing evidence of its effectiveness in an overall sense. Lots of organizations either recommend or conditionally recommend it as a PTSD treatment. It's a relatively new therapy, so maybe it's expected that we don't know the mechanism yet. And it's very similar to CBT exposure. And maybe the bilateral stimulation adds some important, like dumbo feather effect, some important catalyst to the experience. Arguments against EMDR. We talked about the nonspecific effect problem. The mechanism must be present and accounted for to be scientific. And it's probably just therapeutic interaction, CBT style and all the eyeball stuff is just like theatrical ritual. Again, the quote. What's new about EMDR isn't effective. What's effective isn't new.

54:12 Chris: And the idea that it's just sort of like it's a hypothesis in search of a mechanism. Right? Maybe there's nothing actually there. So those are the arguments against. Okay, all right, so I researched EMdr. I subjected myself to EMdrhen, by the way. Don't worry. I was really wanting to try it anyway. I wasn't just doing a thing for the podcast, but cult, though? Kayla: Yes. Maybe. I don't know. Chris: Yeah, I think we'll talk about this when we get to the criteria in a minute. I think the occult evaluation here is like, does the practice of EMDR, like therapists, patients, organizations, etcetera, does all of that constitute a cult? I think that'll be the evaluation. But before we do, there's another really big dovetail here that EMDR has into world of cults. Tell me one thing that came up a surprising number of times when I was reading comments on these articles and on Reddit. Well, actually, let me just tell you the thing that popped up in my Google autocomplete when I was typing in. Is EMdr scientifically proven? When I started typing the sci part, there was an autocomplete for is EMDR Scientology?

55:26 Kayla: No. What? No. Chris: Sus. Am I right? What makes one curious. Kayla: Oh, no. What? Oh, no. Chris: Okay. It's not, it's not like L. Ron Hubbard made Emdr, invented Emdr. Kayla: Francine Shapiro. Chris: I don't believe that Francine Shapiro was a scientologist. Here's the context, though, okay? A lot of ex Scientologists that have also tried or read about EMDR seem to think that they feel quite similar. So specifically, the take is that EMDR and the auditing process. Kayla: Oh, God. Chris: In Scientology feel eerily similar. Kayla: Okay.

56:07 Chris: There was a discussion, actually on the Steve novella article on this very topic, and there's a whole Reddit thread of these folks. And the thread is called EMDr and Scientology. And there's a bunch of comments on there like, thank God I'm not the only one who thought that and noticed similarities myself, too. So what gives here? Kayla: What gives indeed? Chris: I think the original poster on the Reddit thread, user sockrat. Tease. Oh, I just got that when I said it out loud. Cause it's sock. S o c k, rat. And then like, tease is like you're teasing someone. Kayla: Socrates. Chris: Socrates. That's clever. They describe it pretty well. Quote, I am interested if anyone knows anything, has any thoughts about potential connections or similarities between EMDR and Scientology auditing. I recently did eye movement and desensitization reprocessing therapy. I was really struck by how similar it seems to scientology auditing, similar words, and sometimes even lines of a step based pattern that is very programmatic and must be repeated. Exactly. The theory of returning to past traumatic memories to sort of decrease their effect, going over and over them, trying to get to the earliest memory in a chain. The eye movement component, although not directly the same, seems somewhat analogous to an e meter. So I think what he's bringing up there is the, like, is the e meter and the eye movement, right? Just a similar sort of like Dumbo feather catalyst.

57:38 Kayla: Well, cause the e meter, you're holding. You're holding things one in each hand, one in your left hand, your right hand. Chris: Yeah. Kayla: Oh. Chris: They're both bilateral. He says that they're both bilateral and are just a sort of like a side thing that you were told to do that is supposed to help you in the process. I read a bit of theory behind EMDR, and there's something called relational frame theory, which strikes me as. Which we didn't talk about that, but strikes them as similar to the whole theory of engrams. This one might just be my brain playing tricks on me, but whenever I did auditing, I always felt like my head was a little bit tingly. And I get the exact same feeling from EMDR, end quote. And then that's the thread where people are saying, like, yeah, I noticed the similarities, too. And the whole auditing shtick, as we know, is a staple of a lot of the most abusive cults of.

58:30 Chris: This exact tool has been used by Nexium, where it was called exploration of meaning. It's been used by Teal Swan, where she brands at the completion process. It was used by the twin Flames universe cult leaders Jeff and Shaliah, where they, like, they basically stole the completion process whole hog from teal and called it map, if you recall the mind alignment process. But they're all the same thing, right? They're all a practitioner. They're guiding a person through recalling past traumas. And there's some sort of ritualized processing of the trauma. Ultimately, there's probably some therapeutic effect due to the exposure, but of course, the intent for folks like Keith Raniere and Nancy Saltzman is not therapy. It's domination and control. And redditors and myself aren't the only ones to notice this connection.

59:21 Chris: Here's a quote from an insider.com article about NxIVm the most common way NXIVM members would therapize their actions was through Em or exploration of meaning, a term ranieri created during an EM. A member and a high ranking Nexium teacher would sit in chairs facing each other while a group of other members watched. The member would explain an area of their life they were having trouble in, like feeling anxious about a job interview, and the teacher would ask questions to see if the anxiety was rooted in a specific memory or pattern in their past. The vow shows footage of some of these sessions and when Scott, who was a psychologist cited earlier in this article, when Scott watched them, they reminded her of a specific type of therapy called EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. The article continues.

1:00:12 Chris: EMDR is done one one, with a patient speaking confidentially to a therapist in an office, but with Ranieri's EM method, annexium member shared their vulnerable and traumatic past in front of a crowd. When Ranieri or another high ranking member running an EM deemed that the member had a breakthrough, the audience clapped and cheered in celebration. According to Scott, this setup intentionally creates positive reinforcement, so members want to share even more vulnerable information. End quote. So, Kayla, what do you think is going on here? Does this make you think of EMdR any differently? Is it all one big red flag?

1:00:53 Kayla: I think it would be unfair to say that because there are bad actors utilizing techniques that EMDR itself is whole hog a cult or a bad thing, because this isn't the first time that we've talked about something like the completion process, having roots in traditional or scientifically proven therapy modalities. So, like, CBT's not bad and occult. Just because TL Swan has lifted some of those ideas from CBT. So I don't know, it doesn't make me feel great that people who have been through cult making processes go, oh, hey, this thing is really reminding me of that. I think if I had gone into my EMDR session and the session veered from, like, me guiding it to the practitioner guiding it, that would feel like more of a red flag. Does that make sense?

1:01:50 Chris: Not only does that make sense, that was a discussion on the Reddit thread, there was a very specific discussion of, like, one person was like, well, I've done both. And the EMDR, the auditing session was much more like commands from the auditor versus passive guidance from the EMDR practitioner. There's a whole discussion about that. Kayla: Didn't you do an auditing session one time? What's your comparison? Chris: Okay, first of all, that was a long time ago. Second of all, it was at a car show, and the scientologists just had a little table there. And I don't know if it was, like, a true auditing session, but they were, like, doing free. They were doing free something or other. Maybe it was auditing, but, like, they had the. Kayla: You held the little e meters. Chris: I held the little bars, yeah, little e meters. And, like, I don't know. I just, like, whoever they had there was, like, their, like, c team.

1:02:36 Kayla: This has been one of your, like, life's greatest disappointments. Chris: I know. I hate it. Kayla: The person you finally were like, yeah, let's check out the Scientology thing. And the person was just, like, a terrible salesperson. Chris: Yeah, I know. I was like, ooh, I want them to, like, recruit me. You know, like, I. Because, like, I. Kayla: This was 15 years ago. Chris: This was 15 years ago. So I was even more of a dick than I am now, believe it or not. But I was still, like, very much like, you know, skeptic, atheist, yada, yada, neckbeard. So I was like, I didn't really feel like I had any risk of actually, quote unquote, falling for it, which probably means that I had more risk. Kayla: You probably had more risk in retrospect. Chris: But the person was just, like, didn't. I don't know. It was like dead. Dead fish. Like, there was just no care. There was no charisma at all. Zero on charismatic leader.

1:03:26 Kayla: Gotcha. Chris: I was just. And I came away from it being like, oh, man, that's it. Shit. I was kind of hoping that this would be, like, more enticing or, like, I would have had, like, some weird, like, oh, man. Like, that I feel different, or what? It was just. It was very flat. Kayla: Yeah. And I think that just makes me think, like, that doesn't make me think. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience. You're always welcome to go back to a Scientology center and have them try to recruit you. Chris: Maybe I will. Kayla: I just. I don't know if the fact that people might use these techniques for bad means that the techniques are bad. I think that those are maybe two different things.

1:04:08 Chris: Yeah, I completely agree with you, actually. So it's kind of like. Like nuclear power, right? Like, it's super power. It's like splitting the atom is a very powerful thing that we're able to do. We can do it to create, like, limitless energy that we can use for the betterment of everybody's lives, or we can bomb everyone and destroy the world. Like, it's a tool that can be used for good or for ill. Kayla: Right? Like a hammer. Chris: Like a hammer. Well, yeah. The reason I said nuclear bomb is because I feel like dealing with some of this stuff is actually pretty. Pretty powerful, pretty risky, and pretty dangerous, like tapping into somebody's brain, essentially. And I think that's why a lot of these cult like places use them. I'm sure there's some duality going on there. Troll. Not a troll. I'm sure that there's, like, yes, this is actually for people's therapeutic purposes. But again, some of the differences already noted here. Private versus public. Right. So, like, why do they do it in public at NXiVM? Well, because it's not just therapeutic. If it was just therapeutic, you'd probably have it with a therapeutic, private practice with a therapist by yourself. But instead, there's also this component of exposing your vulnerabilities to everyone that gives leverage to the leaders, you know?

1:05:32 Chris: So, bottom line is, I think you can take some of these very powerful tools and you can exploit them for very bad things. It's dangerous. That doesn't. To me, as you said, that doesn't make me think that the EMDR itself as a tool, is. It's not really a red flag for the tool. It's just a red flag for people who would use it. I'll also mention here, since we're talking about this stuff, that one of the risks that associated with the MDR, like, one of the things that detractors will bring up is the idea that it can potentially implant or create false memories. So we've talked about that on the show as well before. And, in fact, that's kind of like one of the big red marks against something like the completion process is that they're. And they're.

1:06:22 Chris: Because they're not, you know, they're doing it for their own, like, pernicious reasons. They're, like, willy nilly creating false memories. That's intentional. That's a feature, not a bug of the completion process. But the way that recalling memories works, you're sort of re experiencing them as you recall them. And so we've talked about this in the show before, when you do that, things in the memory can change things. Like, you may, something may be introduced that wasn't there or change that wasn't there. You remember a person that wasn't there or was there differently or whatever. Right. So when you re experience a memory, there's always that risk of changing it and having some sort of creation of false memory. So that's one of the risks of EMDR because that's what you're doing. You're bringing up memories.

1:07:12 Kayla: Right. Chris: So anyway, I just wanted to mention all that stuff with, like, Scientology, because it is. That's like, a very common thing that some of these more, like, high control cults do. And it's, they probably do it because it is such a powerful tool. Kayla: Right. Chris: All right. Ready for the criteria? Kayla: Yes. Chris: Okay. Charismatic leader. Kayla: Well, how do you feel about Doctor Shapiro? Is she a doctor? Doctor Francine Shapiro? Chris: I'm not sure. She's a psychologist. I'm not sure if she's a PhD. Kayla: How do you feel about Francine Shapiro? Chris: I am not sure. I didn't get the impression that she was charismatic. Honestly, there wasn't a lot of discussion of her in the EMDR circles. There wasn't like, oh, there's this psychologist who really did a lot of work to spread this thing. It was just sort of like, oh, yeah, she invented it.

1:08:04 Kayla: I'm pretty sure. Before I had my Emdr session, my practitioner, before I booked it, my practitioner talked about her. Chris: Okay, that's a little weird. Kayla: I'm pretty sure. Like, when she was explaining, she's like, let me talk to you. Cause I. Okay, to be clear, the person who did my EMDR, I first saw them for something else and then saw them for EMDR, and it was in something else. This is the person who. And that's another thing. This person, this practitioner has only fairly recently started practicing EMDR. I wanna say within the last, like, five ish years, maybe ten. Chris: Yeah, I remember that. Kayla: And before that, her work is entirely in. I don't want to say. I think it's entirely in ADHD diagnosis and treatment. Saw her for that first, and then was like, oh, you also do EMDR. Hell, yeah, I need that. Like, let's talk. And I'm pretty sure she explained, like, let me explain to you, Emdr. I think she talked about how, like, this is, you know, proven to be effective for treating veterans. Talked about.

1:09:05 Chris: Yeah, she talks that with me, too. Kayla: Yeah, yeah. How Francine Shapiro came up with it. So I don't know if that's just this particular practitioner. I have gotten the impression, again, in my brief research and maybe doing an episode about it and then not, I did get some of the impression that the mythology of how Francine Shapiro discovered or came up with this modality is important to the practitioners at large. And I want to say that's a good point. There's an EMDR governing body. Chris: Right. Kayla: That to me feels important to talk about here. Like, if you want to practice EMDR, there is a governing body for this. Like, you can't. Chris: That's not necessarily bad, though.

1:09:46 Kayla: I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying with like, CBT, I can't really tell you. As far as I know, there's not like a CBT governing body. There's not necessarily governing bodies for these various modalities. It feels something different. Like, EMDR is a registered trademark, I think. Let me see. EMDR is trademarked by the EMDR Institute, Incorporated. I don't think things like CBT are trademarked in that way. Chris: Yeah, that's interesting. Kayla: Like for other therapy modalities, like if somebody's gonna be a therapist, I think generally they go to like, therapy school. Right. Not like the EMDR Institute. Chris: Right. Right. Kayla: That to me feels like a different thing. Like for tapping again, going back to tapping, you don't learn tapping in like general being a therapist school. You go to the emotional Freedom Technique Institute. Emdr. You go to the EMDR institute, it feels like they're, it's like a zumba. It kind of feels zumba y in that way. To me, the fact that there is this governing body that is based on this one person's like, she is a PhD, by the way. She founded this institute. This governing body is where you train. Like, it's very localized in this way. I feel like there's an argument for that being the charismatic leader here.

1:11:12 Chris: Yeah, I think the mythology of her origin story for it, you know, like the apple falling thing. Kayla: Right. Chris: I think kind of points to some of that, like charismatic leaderness. I certainly don't think that it's like a Keith Ranieri or L. Ron Hubbard or. I don't think it's like full blown charismatic leader. Kayla: But if you go to the EMDR. Chris: Website, she's present there a little bit. Kayla: She's all over. It's very much about her. The first thing is, welcome to emdr.com comma EMdr Institute, Inc. Founded by Francine Shapiro, PhD. Then there's like all these links that you can click on about her. You scroll down Francine Shapiro, PhD, the originator and developer of EMDR, which I don't want to shit on this person's breakthroughs or shit on somebody having a business come up or trying to make this thing legitimized. I just, I don't think it's the same as other. I couldn't tell you who created CBT.

1:12:09 Chris: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's Freud, and we could talk about who created psychoanalysis, but, yeah, I mean, I would call him a charismatic leader, kind of. So I think that, yeah, you know, we're not saying that it means anything about therapy itself, but it definitely seems like she has an outsized role here. So it's definitely present expected harm for who? Kayla: For practitioners, for patients, for both, for the world. I definitely feel like I have seen some people talking about, like, well, because we don't understand, like, the machinations of this thing, that there's, you know, potential to harm patients because yada, yada, we don't understand it. But overall, I get the impression that this is more helpful than harmful, even if it is placebo effect or the eye moving is more decorative than practical. I don't know. What do you think?

1:13:15 Chris: What if we do find that it's like implanting some false traumatic memories? We had a satanic panic and people got in trouble for that shit. Kayla: I also just, I feel like that's kind of going, oh, there's the possibility for something bad to happen here, rather than, like, this is a bad thing that's happening here, and I can only go off of my own EMDR session. I do not see an opportunity for false memories to be created in the session that I had. Chris: See. I see the opportunity for it not in the session that I had, but, like, in the quote unquote wrong hands. Right. Yeah, I definitely see where this could be something, like if somebody was being much more commanding and guiding, like an auditing process or something like that. You know, like, now, what do you remember there? Do you remember your parents there?

1:14:06 Kayla: Right. Chris: Was your father in the room at the time? Like, you know, if you even like leading stuff like that, I think could. But then, like, any, create those conditions. Kayla: Any therapy has that. Chris: Sure, sure. But that just kind of goes back to the nuclear weapon thing. Right. It's like, it's a powerful tool and, you know, use responsibly. Right. I don't think that means there's expected harm. I just think that means there's, like, potential harm, maybe. Kayla: Right. Chris: Okay. Presence of ritual definitely high, sitting there. Kayla: Being like, with your eyes and. Chris: Oh, yeah. Going back and forth with the hand. In fact, that's the whole thing, right? Is like, does this eye movement ritual contribute in its own right to therapy? Like, that's sort of the question of the day, right? So it's definitely there. It's definitely present niche within society.

1:14:54 Kayla: That's a hard one for me, because I feel like it's both yes and no. It feels like it's pretty goddamn popular these days, but maybe that's just in my circle. I don't know. Chris: It's definitely gaining in popularity. Kayla: Yeah. I don't know if it's as niche as something. Like something niche you've covered. Chris: I don't know. Worm farm. Kayla: It's not as niche as a worm farm scam, but I don't know. Mead? Mead. Chris: Mead. Kayla: Mead. Chris: Mead. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Yeah. No, I think it's definitely not like a household name type of thing, like talk therapy or Prozac, but it's definitely increasing in popularity. So I'd say it's meadow antifactuality.

1:15:45 Kayla: I don't know. And this is where I want to talk about something. So, you know, we've talked about it, but, like, I think that there's the potential for EMDR to be a very powerful woo on ramp. And that is something that scares me here. I was doing research for something that I was writing, and I came upon something called the Gateway project or the gateway experience. It was basically this CIA project back in the eighties maybe, where it was like, oh, we're gonna give money to this task force or this institute to figure out if we can use astral projection to be the CIA. I don't know. One of those things, like a stranger things.

1:16:26 Chris: Classic CIA. Kayla: And they worked with this guy named Robert Monroe, who runs the Monroe Institute, which may or may not show up on the podcast in another season. And one of the things that the Monroe Institute still uses, and then Robert Monroe used in this, you know, shady CIA astral projection. Extraordinarily, like the definition of woo project was using the bilateral stimulation, particularly using binaural beats. This is actually where binaural beats, I think, originally comes from, really is from this Monroe institute technique or whatever, of using that bilateral stimulation in an audio format.

1:17:07 Chris: I've seen a bunch since I listened to ASMR, a lot. I get that recommended to me from time to time, like binaural beats. And then it's almost. I think it's almost one to one where it say, like, binaural beats something. Something hurts. Like astral project. Kayla: Yes. So I think that something like EMDR, and I've seen it, I'm not going to be super articulate here because I'm just going to be going off of, like, feelings and stuff that I've seen and. But I feel like I often see EMDR associated. When you like, dig down, it can get associated with other woo things similarly to the way that, like, acupuncture might or chiropractics might, which chiropractics is halla woo. But, and so, you know, you can make the argument for acupuncture, but, like, EMDR feels like it's this weird kind of like stepping stone in between evidence based, scientifically proven therapeutic modalities and woo wellness culture. And that's something that I don't know how to feel about it.

1:18:11 Kayla: It feels like there's a lot of room for antifactuality if we're saying that, like, oh, the methodology behind EMDR is the same for, like, the methodology behind triggering astral projection. That feels weird to me. And then again, I'm gonna go back to, it feels weird to me that the vast majority of research coming out about EMDR is coming from people who practice it. And I know that's not inherently antifactual, but it makes me think about it, like, part of why I didn't do this. Chris: There's a cui bono there. Yeah. Kayla: Why I didn't do this topic. Yes. I wanted to talk to a professional who wasn't somebody who practiced EMDR, because I felt like, okay, that's a bias. Did a lot of research. Finally found, like, a group of researchers out of, like, I don't know, Denmark or something that were working on this. Found a researcher that I wanted to talk to, attempted to reach out. The email bounced because turns out she was no longer at this, like, university.

1:19:13 Chris: Did the EMDR Institute rub her out? Kayla: Left to become an EMDR practitioner. Chris: Oh, shit. Kayla: She did research, academic research on EMDR, not as an EMDR practitioner. All of the research that she published and participated in was pro EMDR. Like, this is an efficacious thing. And I was like, cool, I want to talk to this person. And then I decided, no, I'm not going to talk to them, because she had left this academic institute, academic setting to go become an EMDR practitioner. Chris: But isn't it possible that, like, that's why she went absolutely practice? Kayla: Totally, but because it found it effective. Like, I didn't, I no longer felt I would be getting an unbiased opinion.

1:19:58 Chris: And I think it's, like, really hard to get that for sure, which is, you know, why we haven't done the topic till now. I also think you don't know if that's anti factual. I think you make a really good point, too, about, like, the stepping stone, like, gateway to woo. I think there's, like, a couple things that fall under that. Like you said, acupuncture, I think, is one of them. I think there's a few others, but that almost feels like that. Plus one's the expected harm for me. I don't know if it's so much antifactual as it is. I mean, it is. It's also a little bit antifactual, but I think, for me, also, the antifactuality manifests itself in the, like, explanations, looking for a cause type of thing. Chris: That seemed like there's so many speculations, including from Doctor Shapiro herself, of how this would work, but we don't know anything. It's literally just making up stories. It's like, well, it works because of the bilateral, and then it reprocesses and unjiggers, the sling flying, and then after that, the medulla and blaugada makes the. Like. There's just a lot of that sort of stuff where it's like, yeah, but you made that up. Cause we don't know yet. Right. So that, to me, like, comes off as kind of anti factual. Like, all the speculation of, like, well, it works. So I don't know. Let's think of some way that it might. So I'm gonna say, like, medium here.

1:21:17 Kayla: Another mead. Chris: Another mead. Because it's. There is some evidence, but. Oh, actually, I will say this too. You are sort of in agreement with Doctor novella about the, like, stepping stone thing. Kayla: Okay. Chris: He mentioned something in his article about how this is a problem with evidence. When things become evidence based practices, potentially prematurely, they can sort of become these types of stepping stones because people are like, well, it's evidence based, right? There's a non specific interaction. We don't know how it works, but it's evidence based. Same thing with acupuncture. Right? It's quote unquote evidence based, but we don't know the specific interaction or if there even is one. It seems like there isn't.

1:21:58 Kayla: Right? Chris: And so then it sort of becomes the stepping stone because of its, like, legitimization from this evidence based thing. So, yes, medium, antifactuality, life consumption. I don't feel like that's super high. I don't feel like, that plays into it very much. Kayla: Yeah. I feel like I would. I don't know. Chris: Like, there's nobody living on compounds. Like, there's nobody saying, like, you have to do this every single day. In fact, EMDR specifically is supposed to only be a limited time thing. That's one of the things that the Scientologist thread talked about was like, EMDR is only supposed to happen for, like, three months or whatever. You're supposed to do it for a certain number of sessions and then stop. Whereas auditing is, like, forever. Keep giving us money.

1:22:42 Kayla: Right. Chris: So I would say the life consumption is pretty low. Kayla: Okay, that makes sense. I agree. Chris: Dogmatic beliefs. I don't get the impression that they say, like, don't do other stuff. I certainly didn't get that from my session. Kayla: Me either. Yeah. As far as I know. It's just kind of like, this is. This is something to use in conjunction with other stuff. Like, it's just. Chris: Yeah, I definitely don't get the vibe of, like, this is the one true way. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: Again, another way it differentiates from Scientology. Right. Scientology is, like, everything other than this is an evil scam. Psychologists are an evil scam. Only auditing is good. Kayla: Right. Chris: Don't get that. So that's low. Chain of victims of. You recruited me into it.

1:23:22 Kayla: I did. Chris: You dashed. Kayla: I did it. And I was like, I think you should do it. I, like, forced you to do it. You. Chris: Absolutely. Kayla: I emailed the lady first and was like, hey, can you set a possession for my guy? Chris: Yeah, but that's because I kept begging you to do it. Kayla: Again, I just. I have a real hard time with the idea that everybody who is a proponent of this is also either giving money to the EMDR institute or getting money from being an EMDR practitioner. I know that's not a one to one of chain of victims, but it smells like it has the potential for scam, for grift, for pyramid scheme, for any of that stuff. I don't think it's necessarily present. I think that the threat is there. Yeah, but it's not necessarily present.

1:24:12 Chris: I think you're right. It feels a little Zumba esque where it's like it doesn't feel like a pyramid, but it does a little bit feel like there's this. I don't know. Like sometimes gatekeeping is good, and then sometimes it kind of feels like a money grab. This feels like it's maybe veers towards the latter. Maybe, you know, like you do want to gatekeep, like, whether somebody can call themselves a doctor or not. Kayla: Right. Chris: But what about this? It's tough to say. So I'm gonna say probably low unchain of victims. Kayla: And I don't know if this is a thing where, like, for Zumba, anybody could be a Zuma practitioner. You just pay enough money. I don't know if the EMDR thing is just like, as long as you pay money to the EMDR institute and do the training, you'll be. Cause not everybody who applies to be a doctor is gonna get to be a doctor. Not everybody gets into medical school or whatever.

1:24:54 Chris: Right. It's not like, pay us to get the certification. It's like you actually have to pass the. Kayla: Right. Yeah, I don't know if that's the same. I kind of get the sense that with EMDR to do, like, the basic training, anybody can do it. Chris: I felt like that, too. But I don't want to say for sure because I didn't look that up specifically. I will say that it does feel like chain of victims is nonetheless fairly low, but maybe with a potential and then safe or unsafe exit feels safe to me. Kayla: I don't think Francine Shapiro is going to come after you. Chris: Yeah. I mean, the practitioner for me said, like, oh, email me tomorrow and tell me how you feel. Kayla: Oh, did you? Chris: But other than, no, you shouldn't email.

1:25:34 Kayla: And be like, we did an entire podcast episode about how. What a woo scam artist you are. Chris: Yeah, you come up a lot, actually. You freak. No. So, no, I forgot. But I didn't. You know, it wasn't like, if you don't come back and do this again, you will be shunned. Like, there wasn't any of that crap. So that's low, too. Kayla: I think it's not a cult. Chris: I think certainly by our criteria. Kayla: Certainly by our criteria, it's not a cult. I think it is something to continue to keep an eye on because I think it's one of those things where, like. Chris: Like, would you have to move your eye back and forth to keep your eye on it? Kayla: Keep your eye constantly moving back and forth while watching this and thinking about a traumatic event. I think it's something that I will be really interested to see what EMDR looks like 20, 30, 40 years from now.

1:26:23 Chris: Yeah, me, too. Kayla: I think it has the potential to be something extraordinarily beneficial for humankind or to become something a little more sinister. I think it's more on track to be something super beneficial. Again, I really, really enjoyed my session, and I got a lot of benefit out of it to the point where I was like, I think you would benefit from this. I want to do an episode on our show about it. I am. Yeah, I am somebody who, you know, I wouldn't blanket recommend. I'm not gonna say, like, everybody listening should go recommend, but, like, but I. Chris: Wouldn'T blanket recommend almost anything mental health. Kayla: But, like, to friends, I'd be like, oh, yeah, you should try this out. I think that overall it's a positive. And if it is actually doing things, like, having an effect on lessening the suffering of people with PTSD, if this is something that is actually helping combat veterans who, like, do not get helped by our government overall, like, if this is actually something that is helpful, then I'm all for it. I just don't want it to become something sinister.

1:27:29 Chris: I agree, too. I think it's not a cult. I do think that I kind of agree on all counts, right? Like, I think that it's. We'll know more in the future, right. The only thing that I worry about. So, like, I can say that I'm worried about, like, other cult leaders using this just like Keith Ranieri did, but, like, that's kind of true for anything. So I don't know if that's specific to EMDR. It's just there's, you know, anything that's a powerful tool is a powerful tool that can be abused. Kayla: Right. Chris: But maybe I do worry a little bit about whether, like, is it going to be the type of thing where, like, in 20 years we'll be like, oh, yeah, we did these studies and it's totally bunk and we discarded it or vice versa. We did these studies and super thumbs up, gung ho. We know the mechanism. Great. Or is it going to be like, is it just going to sort of, like, fade into this gray space that, like, acupuncture kind of sits in right now where it's like, there's correlative effectiveness, but it's a nonspecific effect. And it. It's a stepping stone for, like, woo stuff. So, like, there's still some potential there, I think, for perniciousness. But as of today, as of December 2022, EMDR, not a cult. Keep an eye on it.

1:28:45 Kayla: I want to say one thing just to supplement our discussion that we just had. I quickly looked on their website. In order to become certified an EMDR certified practitioner or whatever, you have to already be a certified mental health professional. So, like, you already have to be a certified or a mental health professional. You have to have already done that process in order, you have to have a master's degree or higher in the mental health field to become an EMDR person. So that makes me feel better as well. Chris: Yeah, makes me feel better. And it also not a cult decreases even further the chain of victims thing. Kayla: Yeah. Chris: So, yeah, great. Hey, did the creativity exercise help you any when we did at the top of the show? Kayla: I mean, I got to hold on to this squeezy guy the whole show, and that was a lot of that helped me.

1:29:30 Chris: Great. You know what it's called? You know where I got that from? Kayla: Doctor Francine Shapiro. Chris: Not doctor Christopher of the podcast culture. I made it. I made it up and made it up completely. Kayla: It was nice. I liked it. Chris: I was just wondering if I could generate my own non specific interaction there to sort of lead into the topic for the show. Kayla: It definitely got me. Nice and relaxed and ready to go. Chris: See, there you go. Nonspecific. You heard it here first. It's the new EMDR. It's the Cmdr. It's the. It's the. The Chris movement descends into something cult are just weird. Kayla: This is Kayla, this is Chris, and. Chris: This is been rapid. Oh, we should do this whole episode. Binaural. We should like, do the whole thing where it goes back and forth on your left and right.

1:30:19 Kayla: I'll say cult, you say or I'll say. Chris: Oh, okay, good. Let's do it. Kayla: That's not gonna do anything though. Chris: No, it won't, but do it anyway. Kayla: Cult or just weird.