EMDR - Trauma therapy

EMDR therapy: Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing

EMDR is a form of trauma therapy that utilizes the brain's natural ability to heal. Whether you've heard about EMDR, experienced EMDR in therapy or know nothing about EMDR, this will explain and help you better understand EMDR therapy.

Let's start with trauma. The American Psychological Association defines trauma as: Any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning. Another definition that simplifies, yet also defines, trauma is : "Too much too soon; Too much for too long; or Too little for too long. (Notice That Podcast).

Traumatic memories get stored in the brain differently than normal, everyday memories. Traumatic memories often get stored in a fragmented way: certain images, sounds or smells, the negative belief you have about yourself, the emotions and the body sensations all get stored in the brain in a maladaptive way. When you hear the word "trigger", that is referring to what happens when the brain encounters something that activates the body's nervous system to believe that the traumatic event is currently happening. For example, a veteran who returns home after months of being at war hears a car backfire outside the home. The sound of the car backfiring doesn't register as a car backfiring; it registers that he is back in the danger zone of war, and his body reacts as if it is currently happening and he is in danger. (even if he is safe in his home). The body is what remembers the trauma. Or, another example might be someone who goes to visit a friend in the hospital who just had a baby, but upon entering the hospital, the sound of the machines beeping triggers a traumatic memory of being in the hospital when a loved one was dying.

When a trigger occurs, the nervous system is highly activated. There may be a feeling of danger, panic, anxiety or even shut down. The traumatic memory is highly distressing, in an emotional and physical way.

EMDR: The "EM" part of EMDR is for eye movements. However, a lot of EMDR therapists do not use eye movements. Rather than the words "eye movements"

, a better phrase would be "Bilateral Stimulation". This can be done through eye movements (that go right to left), music or tones (that go from right ear to left ear), or tappers (handheld buzzers that vibrate from right hand to left hand). Whichever methodology is used, the point of bilateral stimulation is that both the right and left brain are activated (while focusing on the traumatic event) to help "desensitize" and "reprocess" the traumatic memory.

EMDR: The goal of desensitizing the memory would be that the memory no longer holds the same activation in the body. You can think of the memory or imagine the memory, and it feels like any other memory after EMDR.

EMDR: The goal of reprocessing is to process the memory in a way that feels more adaptive and helps the memory become less fragmented and more cohesive.

How does Bilateral Stimulation ("BS") work? We can't fully know exactly what is happening in the brain, but when you understand the brain, BS makes sense in a trauma-informed approach.

Our brain is incredibly intricate and just altogether fascinating. The left side of our brain is responsible for logic, organization, rationalization, thought and words. As a matter of fact, there is a part of the Left-side of the brain known as "Broca's region" that is responsible for language. A lot of talk therapy takes place in the left brain. We are talking, analyzing, discussing, telling stories and challenging thoughts.

The right side of the brain is the more primitive side of the brain. It is preverbal. It holds the "felt sense" of what happens. In the right side of the brain, we hold emotion, body sensation, quick, automatic reactions to things before thought ever enters the picture. It is our survival brain. Have you ever just felt mad or anxious and couldn't really identify why? That is a right brain response. There is a felt sense, an emotion, a body sensation with no words or explanation for why.

In EMDR, we are activating both sides of the brain to reprocess a traumatic memory. If we stay in the left side too long, we will logic our way out of it, but never really heal. If we stay in right brain too long, we will just feel it all without making sense and having some sort of cohesive narrative. This is the magic of EMDR.

Next Blog: What happens in an EMDR session?