The Discovery of EMDR

In 1987, Francine Shapiro was pursuing her PhD in English Literature at New York State University. She had recently been diagnosed with cancer and was seeking ways of treatment.  While taking a walk in a park one day that year, she noticed that the distressing thoughts she was feeling suddenly disappeared. She recognized that what she had been doing before was simply moving her eyes from side to side while she was walking, holding the distressing thoughts in her mind. Afterwards, she noticed that when she brought those thoughts back to mind, they were now not as upsetting or seem as valid as they had been before. A true WTF moment.

What caught her attention that day was that her disturbing thoughts were disappearing and changing without any conscious effort on her part.

By exploring further into "how" and "why" this happened through working with some 70  other people over the course of about 6 months, Francine developed a standard procedure that consistently succeeded in alleviating peoples complaints from emotional distresses.

This serendipitous observation led her to develop what would later become a powerful technique in trauma therapy: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - EMDR.