Advantages
REMAP Treatment Advantages
The REMAP methods make the job of desensitizing emotional distress more comfortable, more reliable, and faster.
Working with emotionally intense memories can present a challenge for both therapist and client. This is where REMAP offers distinct advantages over other treatments.
Clients can only tolerate so much work on an emotionally sore spot. Each client has a different tolerance level for the pain of working with distressing memories. The differences from one client to the next can be hard for many therapists to assess. If the therapist pushes the client beyond their pain threshold, two unfortunate things can happen: 1). the client quits therapy and 2). the client associates distress with treatment and does not return to therapy or does not give their current therapist the opportunity to continue trying to help.
Therapists by nature tend to be sensitive and compassionate individuals. As such, the therapist does not want to see their clients suffer. If the treatment they utilize is failing to produce adequate desensitization of the client’s emotional pain, the therapist may unconsciously divert treatment to methods or treatment issues that do not focus on dealing with emotional intensity. This lowers the discomfort level for clients and therapists but may simply be avoiding important treatment issues.
The central problem here is that treating emotionally intense issues with most treatment methods is a little bit like surgery without anesthesia. Clear examples of this are the exposure therapies. First of all, let me say that I think exposure therapy is essential and very important. In fact, I have never seen any form of therapy be successful in desensitizing traumatic emotional pain without utilizing therapeutic exposure. However, frequently the client is not able to tolerate the treatment and they quit therapy before they reach desensitization.
This is where the REMAP methods really help. Although REMAP incorporates elements of exposure therapy, it also utilizes numerous interventions that soothe the sympathetic nervous system, calms the emotional midbrain, and rapidly relieves the suffering of intense emotional pain. As a result, REMAP provides enough emotional anesthesia that the treatment is better tolerated by clients. Quick REMAP and the full REMAP process also enables the therapist to regulate their own distress at hearing the sometimes horrific details that some trauma survivors may have endured. This can help to reduce therapist burnout.
For the therapist who works with issues that are rooted in the emotional midbrain and that affect the regulation of the autonomic nervous system (such as PTSD, acute traumatic stress, panic attacks, phobic responses, the other anxiety disorders, and anger management), Quick REMAP, the full REMAP process, and the REMAP Visual Field Treatment offer advantages for both client and therapist that can make the process of desensitizing painful experiences both easier and more effective.
