Eyes on the prize

Kevin Brock had run seven Midwest marathons before deciding he needed a psychotherapist to help him take on the Boston Marathon this year. It wasn't a sudden bout of insecurity that plagued him—Brock says he was running as fast as he ever had—but a desire to enhance the quality of the experience.

"I wanted to experience the Boston Marathon in a way I hadn't before. I could tell you all about the pain associated with running a marathon, and afterward I would feel a sense of achievement. But I've been told by so many people that the real joy is about experiencing the course, like 'Heartbreak Hill,'" the race's final grueling climb. "I wanted to feel powerful, run a great race and be present," the 40-year-old portfolio manager says.

So Brock called Chicago psychotherapist Tom Schemper and underwent a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. EMDR, sometimes called "bilateral stimulation," uses sensory stimulation—visual, auditory or tactile, in combination or separately—to trigger alternating sides of the brain. It's believed that by activating the brain's opposing hemispheres—the right side houses our emotional circuits and the left is our rational, cognitive side—people can bring their rational faculties to bear on issues that were previously purely emotional. A key factor that makes EMDR different from talk therapy is time investment. While most clients know they're in for the long haul when they enter traditional therapy, EMDR is said to turbocharge recovery.

In a typical session, Schemper has his clients wear headphones and hold pulsating microphones in both hands. Each emits waves that alternate in sync from left to right. The protocol has eight steps, but during the core "processing," Schemper holds up a finger, which he also moves from side to side. As clients follow his finger with their eyes, he guides them in identifying negative beliefs about themselves and replacing them with positive beliefs, which is accomplished by continually reinforcing them. He asks clients, for example, to describe what the old beliefs feel like in the body, to give them a color and a shape. He continually asks clients to reexamine their beliefs, and, as that process continues, the old beliefs are said to be "contained," and the distress loses its charge.

Brock had just three 90-minute sessions with Schemper, but even before completion, he says he felt unblocked and raring to go. "When I left his office after the second session, I felt the same exact way I did after seeing Rocky when I was in the eighth or ninth grade. I was so pumped up that I felt like I wanted to take on something huge." Brock says he had a "newly formed purpose that I could tap into to access my sense of power."

How can 90 minutes with a shrink do that? "When people leave my office, the process that we jump-started by looking at the issue from doing the bilateral stimulation keeps going," Schemper says. "It might not be as intense, and sometimes people return, reporting that they haven't thought about the issue since the last session at all. But more often than not, the processing goes forward so when you come back a week or two later, you have more of a perspective about it. Then we can continue to sculpt the positive beliefs in a very true way."

Brock ran the Boston Marathon in three hours and 24 minutes. He didn't qualify for the following year, but he says "that wasn't the goal. All kinds of cool things happened," Brock says. "About 13 miles into the race, I had the energy and power to high-five 200 20-year-old women from Wellesley College," who were there to cheer on the runners. "It took about half a minute and it cost me some energy, but I said, 'I don't care,' and to me that makes the story. I had the spiritual and physical presence to do all that." When he began to feel depleted at mile 22, Brock says, "I tapped into the process, and it helped me finish the race."

In 1987, Francine Shapiro, a graduate student in psychology living in California, developed EMDR when she noticed she was rapidly shifting her eyes in response to stressful thoughts. With experimentation, she determined that the eye action causes changes in brain function. The therapy was originally used to treat post-traumatic-stress disorder and is recommended for soldiers by the U.S. State Department, but her theory is not without its detractors.

Richard Zinbarg, associate professor in psychology at Northwestern University and director of the Anxiety and Panic Treatment Program at the Family Institute, says, "Many people have a problem with Shapiro herself. She has a very tight control over who can do the therapy. They have to train with her and pay her lots of money to do so. Many people who work with posttraumatic-stress disorders are insulted by that."

That could be a case of professional turf war, but also at issue is defining exactly what's at work in EMDR to effect the changes. Don Catherall, clinical associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, specializes in trauma and was one of the first to use EMDR. "I've found it to be extremely useful in some cases, but there is some research showing that the actual eye movements aren't the important factor. I'm probably the only one, but I'm beginning to think it's about taking attention away from what's going on inside and paying attention to the outside."

Catherall describes a call he got from a woman who was in the middle of a flashback. "I asked her what she was looking at; she said a wall. I asked her to describe the wall—the color, the texture, questions that really required that she see what was out there—and she came out of it in about 20 seconds."

Lately, Schemper has been refining his technique, calling his version of EMDR "brain-integration processing for optimizing performance" and focusing on performance enhancement and executive coaching, in which clients will make connections, sometimes with family-of-origin issues, that might stir up emotions and affect performance in the office. "A person's inability to fire a poor worker because of unresolved issues that reminds them of a brother or parent can block you from your sense of competencies and keep you stuck," Schemper says.

Don Drews, a marketing consultant, went to Schemper at just such a career crossroads. "I was looking at my choices and asking, 'What do I do next?' I had anxiety about the future, but even that's brand-new language for me. Tom helped me solidify my resolve so I could start making changes." Drews says the shift in his thinking was not a "kaboom moment," but he started making changes during his six sessions—and after. "This is not a silver bullet, and at moments, old feelings come back." Those old feelings, however, "are no longer amplified," Drews says. He named his new company Courageous Marketing.

Call Tom Schemper at 312-787-6425. A package of three 90-minute sessions costs $1,400. For details check out www.EMDR.com.