Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)
Hi there, Katie here!
If you haven’t heard of Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART) before, I’m glad you’re here!
It wasn’t that long ago that I discovered ART myself and was blown away by both the efficiency and longevity of the healing it can provide.
So to get you started, let’s dive into the basics of ART…
What is Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART)?
ART is a unique, evidence-based technique that utilizes the same bilateral eye movements we experience during our REM sleep cycles to facilitate the brain’s innate ability to process our experiences (i.e.: moving information from one area of the brain to another). That, in combination with other effective therapeutic techniques, offers those who’ve suffered for years with Post-traumatic Stress, anxiety, depression, complex grief, OCD, phobias, disordered eating, and other challenges with a new pathway for healing and recovery.
ART pairs voluntary image replacement with those eye movements, as an essential tool for helping client’s choose new, positive and preferable images, sounds, and sensations to experience in place of the internal experiences connected to the original trauma or struggle. It is the pairing of the horizontal eye movements and these new, client-chosen images that makes ART so effective and efficient.
In fact, it is not unusual for client’s to feel significant (or total) improvement in just one ART session!
What's the science behind ART?
A great deal of research has gone into examining how different therapeutic approaches can help those suffering from the lingering effects of trauma.
From exposure therapy to psychopharmaceuticals, the ongoing goal is to help provide much needed relief from the disruptive symptoms related to post-traumatic stress, such as hyperarousal of the stress response, distressingly intrusive memories and images, difficulty emotionally regulating, as well as nightmares and other sleep disturbances.
The clinical community has described post-traumatic stress “as a consequence of… the brain fail[ing] to appropriately consolidate and integrate episodic memory into the semantic memory system” (Stickgold, 2002). Basically, the trauma gets stuck in one area of our brain that interprets the memories as a re-living of the trauma, causing one to live in a chronic state of stress-anticipation and activation.
The two primary components of ART that draw from existing evidence-based therapies for treating trauma include the utilization of imaginal exposure (imagining the traumatic experience(s)) and imagery re-scripting. This is based on the tenets that most intrusive memories include a great deal of image-based material (Hackmann, 2011) that is not well integrated (Conway and Pleydell-Pierce, 2000). In order to become less intrusive and distressing, the memory content needs to be integrated with more positive images (Conway et al., 2004). This process tends to facilitate greater change in mood and affect, than changes to verbal thought (Holmes et al., 2006).
Additionally, eye-movements are often calming, producing theta waves in the brain. Theta waves have been associated with creativity, intuition, daydreaming and are often present during meditative states.
Check out the latest research into Accelerated Resolution Therapy HERE.
Why ART might be a better approach for you.
There are many types of therapeutic approaches to healing because there are many types of people in this world with varying needs and temperaments. What works from some, might not work for you and vice versa.
ART is especially helpful for those who do not feel comfortable with traditional talk therapy.
There are many understandable reasons why sharing our inner-most thoughts, feelings, and pains with a stranger (or maybe anyone!) just isn’t a realistic option for some. Being married to a law enforcement officer has helped me develop a great deal of understanding and empathy toward those in the first responder and veteran communities who often suffer in silence because traditional approaches to mental health treatment place unrealistic expectations on clients to “just open up.”
One of major advantage to ART is that it requires minimal verbalization. In fact, you don’t have to share any details of your traumatic experience during an ART session if you don’t want to. Clients often find this offers a greater sense of safety and control and helps increase motivation to move through the protocol and feel more hopeful about healing.
ART has proven to be especially effective for significantly improving or resolving complex grief, event-related post-traumatic stress, phobias, job-related stress, OCD, anxiety and panic.
ART vs. EMDR
Another widely known trauma treatment intervention that utilizes bilateral eye movements to effectively process trauma is Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR).
EMDR aims to reduce the emotional impact of traumatic memories by having the client recall the memory while simultaneously engaging in some form of bilateral stimulation (e.g.: eye movements, tapping or auditory tones), with the goal of “unblocking” the processing pathway and allow for the original memories to properly integrate.
While both ART and EMDR utilize bilateral stimulation in their protocols for treating trauma-related conditions, there are some key differences between these two therapies (Kip et al., 2013):
- Images: ART uses voluntary image replacement to change the actual recall of images and/or other senses (i.e., from negative to positive), whereas EMDR aims to cognitively desensitize the client to the original traumatic images
- Processing body sensations: ART spends considerably more time processing physiological sensations invoked by exposure to imagined material than EMDR, and by protocol, dictates that after each “scene-focused” set of eye movements, the therapist use a corresponding set of eye movements specifically to process (neutralize) physiological sensations.
- Standardized protocol: For each set of eye movements, ART uses a fixed number (40) to help clients process, but avoid being flooded with information, whereas the number of eye movements in EMDR varies.
- Free Association: Unlike EMDR, ART is purposely not free-associative. While ART is more directive in nature, the use of the voluntary image replacement facilitates client control and autonomy of their processing experience.
- Treatment length: While there is never a fixed length of treatment in any form of psychotherapy, EMDR often requires 10-20 sessions while ART usually takes 1-5 sessions to achieve noticeable progress.
- Verbalizing: While EMDR doesn’t require clients to share in great detail about their trauma, ART doesn’t require clients to share any details about their traumatic experience, if they don’t want to. Very little talking occurs in an ART session in general.
- Closure and Resolution: There are 8 phases of the EMDR treatment process and free association is incorporated throughout. This can sometimes leave clients activated at the end of sessions, having to “resource” themselves to re-regulate on their own. ART utilizes very structured protocols that address activation quickly and are designed to offer a sense of resolution at the end of each session.
What you can expect:
I completed the Basic ART training in May 2024 and am in the process of accumulating the necessary hours for my ART certification.
Here’s how I currently offer ART:
Step 1: Free 20min consultation. This is where we discuss what you are looking for and what I can provide, to determine if ART will be a good fit for you healing journey.
Step 2: Initial Intake. In This 75min session, we will go over the information from your intake assessment paperwork (completed electronically prior to the session). This is also when you will identify your treatment goals and highlight the specific content and issues you’d like to use ART to resolve.
Step 3: Scheduling four ART sessions (90min). My recommendation is to schedule 4 ART sessions from the start. This will help set you up for the most success and limit potential obstacles that could impede progress. Please note: payment is collected after each session, so there is no financial burden on the client to schedule ahead of time!
If you feel enough improvement before the completion of your 4 sessions, you can simply cancel up to 48 hours in advance without penalty!
References
Conway, M. A., Meares, K., and Standart, S. (2004). Images and goals. Memory 12, 261–288. Conway, M. A., and Pleyd
Conway, M. A., and Pleydell-Pierce, C. W. (2000). The construction of autobiographical memories in the selfmemory system. Psychol. Rev. 107, 261–288.
Hackmann, A. (2011). Imagery rescripting in posttraumatic stress disorder. Cogn. Behav. Pract. 18, 424–432.
Holmes, E. A., Mathews, A., Galgleish, T., and MacKintosh, B. (2006). Positive interpretation training: effects of mental imagery versus verbal training on positive mood. Behav. Ther. 37, 237–247.
Kip, K. E., Sullivan, K. L., Lengacher, C. A., Rosenzweig, L., Hernandez, D. F., Kadel, R., Kozel, F. A., Shuman, A., Girling, S. A., Hardwick, M. J., & Diamond, D. M. (2013). Brief treatment of Co-Occurring Post-Traumatic stress and depressive symptoms by use of accelerated resolution Therapy®. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 4. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00011
Stickgold, R. (2002). A putative neurobiological mechanism of action
What is ART? – Accelerated Resolution Therapy. (2023, January 20). Accelerated Resolution Therapy. https://acceleratedresolutiontherapy.com/what-is-art/