ENHANCING PERFORMANCE USING EMDR
Our ability to perform often requires a clear vision of success, honing specific skills to carry it out, managing our energy levels and time effectively, and embodying focus and presence. Dr. Sandra Foster and Dr. Jennifer Lendl developed the “Peak Performance Protocol” that expanded the standard EMDR protocol to help people enhance performance in creative, entrepreneurial, and athletic domains. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It is an 8 phase therapy approach originally created to help people process past trauma, which can cause nervous system activation and a variety of mental health concerns.
When we are triggered in the present day, we may experience symptoms associated with low self-esteem, imposter syndrome, anxiety, depression, anger, motivation, and more. This can drain our energy levels and unconsciously compel us to adopt less helpful thought and emotion-processing patterns and behaviours. This is our, often unconscious, attempt to create homeostasis in our systems. These less helpful thoughts and behaviours serve as coping mechanisms. We may feel momentarily relieved, but most often, these unconscious patterns are not in alignment with our full potential and can limit our ability to excel.
The Peak Performance Protocol focuses less on reprocessing past trauma, and more on increasing open-mindedness and accessibility to possibilities. Concepts from positive psychology are used to emphasize the benefits of uncovering and strengthening the resources that people already have, while simultaneously focusing on what’s possible to enhance in the future.
A Glimpse into the Peak Performance Protocol:
Resource Development and Installation
Your therapist will help you identify specific skills needed for peak performance by looking to role models who embody them or times when you have embodied them yourself. You will be guided to visualize a successful performance and then imagine yourself doing the same. As you use specific skills required to accomplish your goals, your thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and actions will be observed. This process will be made more accessible using bilateral stimulation (eye movements/tapping/tonal sounds). You will experience what it feels like to be in the right state of mind and flow to succeed in your domain, which can be remembered and attuned to when it’s go-time.
Assessment: Selecting Target of Intervention
Your therapist will guide you in choosing a troubling experience associated with low performance. Sometimes an earlier memory that is linked to the more recent one may surface, but other times reprocessing the recent experience will lead to greater nervous system regulation when trying again. You will attune to your thoughts, emotions, and physical body sensations when feeling activated by this memory.
Desensitization and Installation
This is when the magic happens! This phase may take a couple of sessions. Your therapist facilitates your innate ability to heal by increasing communication between different parts of your brain using eye movements/tapping. This allows adaptive information to connect with maladaptive information, fostering a dual awareness where you can experience intense feelings and sensations while simultaneously knowing you are safe in the present moment. Reprocessing the low performance experience allows for new neural connections to form at a structural level and for more accurate and helpful self-beliefs to be embodied.
Once complete, you should have an increased ability to face the challenges and joys of being a high performer in your field. Your mindset will be more aligned with your genuine, positive beliefs about your ability to succeed, and the motivating feelings of high performance will be easily accessible. When we are equipped with skills, a clear mind, and the visceral memory of what success feels like, we set ourselves up to achieve excellence!
Written by Andrea Montello
References:
About EMDR Therapy. EMDRIA. (February 7th, 2024). https://www.emdria.org/about-emdr-therapy/
Foster, S., & Lendl, J. (2001). Peak performance EMDR: Adapting trauma treatment to positive psychology outcomes and self-actualization. Success at Work, San Francisco, California & Performance Enhancement Unlimited, San Jose, California.