Shapiro is the first to acknowledge that her eight-step EMDR method incorporates elements from several existing therapies in addition to the unique eye-movement stimulation technique. "But all we have to do," she says in response to detractors, "is keep allowing the research to come out, which keeps showing that EMDR works. And the idea is healing people, it's not having a theoretical argument." Patients who feel better after EMDR agree.

Laurie Sprinzen was napping on a Long Island Railroad commuter train one evening in December 1993, when she awoke to the sound of gunshots. A man named Colin Ferguson had opened fire, killing six passengers before being overpowered by others. Sprinzen recalls "pandemonium," and remembers standing on the station platform later, "looking around, and still not really knowing what was going on, and seeing somebody's head against the side of the train, and there was blood visible." In the days that followed, Sprinzen says she "Freaked out. I wouldn't even drive to the train station. I was really afraid, because every time I closed my eyes, I saw that head against the window."

Sprinzen sought help from a therapist who had treated her for another problem years earlier, and this time he offered to try EMDR. After just three sessions, she says, her fears were gone. "I really don't know [how it works]," she told She TV, "but what I think it does is you're concentrating on one level, whether it be following a hand or the tapping, cause you get into the rhythm of that hand going back and forth, that it's almost like you zone out of what you were thinking about, for even that 10 seconds with the fingers going back and forth. And then when you get back into the question, it's not as imperative anymore. It changes your focus. You don't have to walk around being scared about a thing. I mean, I could not get on a train that I had been doing for 15 years, so, you know, it worked for me."