Understanding Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing or EMDR

Reprocessing traumatic memories by “repairing” mental injuries

What is EMDR Therapy?

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, is a revolutionary therapy that helps with processing trauma and traumatic triggers. It helps bypass the area of the brain that has become “stuck” in negative memories or beliefs, allowing the brain to self-soothe from left to right and find peaceful resolution.

Developed by Francine Shapiro in 1988, EMDR has been widely researched and proven effective. It can be helpful in treating memories involving trauma including attachment based trauma, car accidents, war trauma, sexual assault, rape, chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and many other experiences and symptoms.

How EMDR Works

EMDR can be effective in just a few sessions. EMDR taps into the natural healing ability of your body to help connect your brain and body’s memory networks to help fully process a traumatic memory, all led by you and facilitated by your therapist.

During a session, a client focuses on a distressing memory and engages in bilateral stimulation —using eye movements, tapping, or sound to go back and forth from the left to the right side of your body — to help decrease the intensity of your emotional and physical responses to the memory.

By activating both hemispheres of the brain, clients are able to move past the trauma and reduce the emotional and physical toll it takes on the nervous system.

Because EMDR focuses on healing trauma through memory and sensory processing, it is not required to describe the event out loud, unless you choose to. Client’s tap into their natural healing ability and come to new connections and insights on their own, often times feeling empowered once they’ve fully processed a memory.

The results of EMDR provide a sense of closure and can accelerate healing by integrating the impact of trauma on our brain and body. After EMDR, you still remember what happened without your body feeling like you are reliving it, making it feel like its an experience in the past. Often times triggers or feelings associated with these memories are much more manageable moving forward.

Why EMDR is Effective 

Stress responses are normal — part of our natural fight, flight, freeze, or fawn instincts. But sometimes, when we experience something traumatic or distressing, parts of us can get “stuck” in that experience. It’s a little like an “injury” to the brain and body, akin to scar tissue over an old wound. When triggers occur that remind our brain, subconscious, or our nervous system of the original event, parts of us respond as though we are still in that memory instead of safe in the present moment.

EMDR helps our brain and body to work through this “time-traveling” system response to integrate and gain insight into what originally happened, as well as understand long-held negative thoughts that arose from what we experienced. It makes use of both the mind and the senses, allowing them to work together in a way that helps us heal from old memories still stored in our body. It can support us in processing the past and regaining a sense of safety in the present. We still remember what happened to us, but our nervous system’s stress response is resolved.

What EMDR Helps Address

EMDR is proven to be effective and efficient, with very low risk. However, it only works with issues that relate to traumatic experiences, so if you have a mental health condition due to an injury or inherited condition, EMDR may not be able to help. EMDR doesn’t change physical injuries, but can impact the intensity of pain associated with them. EMDR is most often used to help treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Therapists also use this treatment modality to help with:

  • Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Dissociation or depersonalization

  • Eating disorders

  • Gender dysphoria

  • Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and body dysmorphic disorder 

  • Personality disorders

  • Acute stress

The potential benefits of EMDR include:

  • Trauma resolution

  • Improved focus and concentration

  • Improved sleep quality

  • Reduced distressing symptoms, such as flashbacks, nightmares and hypervigilance

  • Better physical health

  • Improved relationships

  • Gaining of new perspectives

  • Experience more progress in less time

Do you feel like EMDR could be right for you?

Traumatic memories don't have to run your life. Our EMDR trauma therapy addresses your emotional and physical response so you can move past the trauma.Reach out to us to begin the conversation.