June is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, Awareness Month. One treatment for PTSD is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy, or EMDR therapy. Celebrities have opened up about their use of the therapy and experts in the psychology and psychiatric field say when famous people go to or use a type of treatment, there’s usually an emergence of others following.

Psychiatrists say EMDR is a relatively new therapy. It was discovered in the late 1980s by accident. Mike Cummings, chair of psychiatry at the University of Buffalo and associate medical director for ECMC, says the idea behind the therapy is that when people go through traumatic events, sometimes their brains don’t process the information in the same way they could everyday things. He says emotions towards those traumatic events could remain strong.

The theory of EMDR therapy is that it helps your brain consolidate those memories in a more efficient way so you don’t have those results. 

"The idea is you're trying to activate both parts of your brain kind of simultaneously while you're not reliving the traumatic event, but you're focusing either on an image, a memory, an emotional feeling, some somatic body awareness," Cummings said. "And the idea is while you're activating both sides of your brain, so most commonly it is eye movement, which is how it started. So they'll have two fingers and go back and forth and they do this what they call bilateral stimulation."

That bilateral stimulation helps you experience the traumatic event in a less traumatic way so you have less emotional connection. Cummings says it can be any type of bilateral texture — sometimes it’s touch; sometimes it's back-and-forth eye movement; sometimes it it’s glasses that have lights moving back and forth. He stresses that’s the theory behind how EMDR therapy works, but while it's effective, psychiatrists still don’t know exactly how it works.

Cummings says its a tool, but it doesn’t work for everyone. He says people should discuss with their therapist if it’s right for them.