What is EMDR?
EMDR Therapy (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy) is a therapy technique that helps people heal from distressing or traumatic life events. To understand EMDR you must first understand how the brain processes memories. Let’s imagine that your brain is made up of multiple mini filing cabinets. At the end of the day all of your memories from that day are filed into the appropriate filing cabinets and during your REM cycle of sleep these memories are moved to your long-term memory, where they start to become consolidated. It takes about 3 months for your brain to fully consolidate a memory. For example, you likely remember what you ate for lunch yesterday, but it’s less likely you remember what you ate 2 weeks ago and I’d be very impressed if you remembered what you ate 3 months ago. That’s because at three months those memories have been fully consolidated to your long-term memory as they were stored correctly. But when we have a hard event in our life, our brain does not store that memory correctly. So, if you had a distressing event on this date three months ago, you would likely remember what you ate (along with all the other details from that day), That’s because the information did not get stored correctly. This incorrect storage can lead to past memories feeling very present. Related or unrelated stimuli in the present (triggers) can lead to us to feeling like we are in the midst of that memory. We may feel the exact thoughts, emotions and body sensations we did at the time of the event; our brain feels as if the past disturbing event is happening currently.
EMDR therapy is based upon the fact that our emotional well-being is interwoven with our physical (somatic) state. Therefore, EMDR employs a body-based technique called bilateral simulation (BLS) during which a therapist will guide a client through eye movements, tones, or taps in order to move a memory that has been incorrectly stored to a more functional part of the brain. Using BLS has shown to help relieve the anxiety associated with the trauma so that the original event can be viewed from a more detached perspective, like watching a movie of what happened. This allows you to access positive ways of reframing the original trauma (reprocessing), and to release the body’s stored negative emotional charges around it (desensitization). During the process the painful memories associated with the trauma will begin to lose their charge, allowing you to react to stimuli in the present without the past interfering.
EMDR therapy may be used within standard talk therapy, as an adjunctive therapy with a separate therapist, or as a treatment all by itself.
