EMDR - Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

What is EMDR and how does it work?

EMDR is not reliving past traumas

EMDR is observing memories from the perspective of the present moment.

EMDR does not introduce or eliminate memories.

EMDR does maximizes the potential of your working memory to facilitate the deletion of unimportant information around memories, specifically the emotional and somatic components of a memory that continue to create current distress, and keep important information that you will need for future survival. 

EMDR does not facilitate a foreign experience for your body.

EMDR does use mechanisms that your body naturally and spontaneously activates in your everyday life. (EMDR mimics eye movement similar to REM sleep, the information processing phase of sleep).

“Trauma does not create an emotional problem, it creates a memory problem.” 

Memory networks are the primary foundation for emotional health and for suffering. 

When memories are naturally and spontaneously processed in every day life they move through a series of sequential steps in various structures in our brain. The outcome is that important information necessary for survival is kept and and information that is no longer relevant gets  deleted. The important information is then linked with categorically similar information, integrated, and efficiently stored in ways that enhance our performance in life, often on an implicit, unconscious level. 

When stress hormones go up they turn off our prefrontal cortex. This is adaptive because the prefrontal cortex is a very slow processor, and removing it allows you to respond instinctively and immediately to threat, enhancing your chance of survival. 

The problem is that the prefrontal cortex is one of the necessary sequential steps in information processing. Turning it off it may improve survival, but it prevents integration of new information. 

During the active phase of threat, information coming in, rather than getting processed, get’s neurologically stored in its original disturbing state. It remains stable over time without a reference to time and current levels of safety, meaning it feels disturbing now even if the precipitating event has passed. It is unaltered by new life experiences and the person holding it can relive the full range of emotional, somatic, and cognitive experiences associated with the memory when they are triggered by an associated event. 

EMDR accelerates the processing mechanism so that barriers to processing are removed and the body can do what it is meant to do, triage important and unimportant information, delete non-relevant somatic and emotional content, and store information useful for future survival in an integrated and efficient form. The desired outcome is that you remember events but do not feel distress around the memory.