What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a type of psychotherapy that targets the maladaptive memory networks in the brain to heal from traumatic, distressing, and disturbing life experiences. When we experience something stressful or disturbing, it gets stored in the brain with the negative thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and images associated with that memory. What can happen is these negative experiences begin to form certain themes that get confirmed over and over again. For example, if you’ve experienced multiple traumas or relationship betrayals, you might have developed a theme around safety and vulnerability. You may frequently have thoughts such as, “I’m not safe,” “I can’t trust anyone,” or “It’s not okay to be vulnerable.” For others, themes around responsibility and defectiveness may have been activated. You may have been taught through experiences and unkind relationships that there’s something “wrong with you,” or that it’s “your fault” that something happened to you. These negative experiences confirm the same hurtful beliefs over and over. It’s almost like a spiderweb, the memories build upon each other until every experience that feels the same gets caught in the web. With EMDR, we try to unravel that web and help your brain understand that the negative messages you received aren’t true.

Memories are both implicit and explicit. Basically, there are parts of a memory that you can readily recall, but there’s also parts of the memory that you might not fully remember. Those parts of a memory are “implicit,” meaning that your body and brain hold onto it and store information around it, even if you can’t pull upon the information. In EMDR, we also target the parts of the memory stored in the body, to fully heal all aspects of a memory. Because this type of therapy directly works with the images, negative thoughts, feelings, and body sensations associated with memories, the psychological pains associated with these memories tend to heal much faster than in typical psychotherapy. Clients that initially may have been in therapy for many years are able to process these pains at a quicker rate. Further, “EMDR therapy is widely considered one of the best treatments for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and it has been endorsed as an effective therapy by many organizations.”-Emdria

How Does it Work?

Our brains know how to heal from trauma and pain, but sometimes this healing process can get blocked. This happens when our stress responses (Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Cry For Help/Attach) get confused. Basically, our body and brain get overwhelmed and "freeze in time,” unable to move past the events, staying in these stress responses. When blocks occur, information in the brain isn’t getting shared with the other areas in the brain that need to communicate in order to heal. With EMDR, we help mend that block through Bilateral Stimulation to help information integrate between the two hemispheres of the brain. Bilateral Stimulation (BLS) is using alternating right and left stimulation (through eye movements, tapping, alternating pulses in the hands, etc) to activate the brain areas needed to integrate information and come to new conclusions around the events. “EMDR therapy helps the brain process these memories and allows normal healing to resume.”-Emdria You’ll still remember the negative experience, but the stress responses from the initial event resolve, allowing you to move forward and heal. “Remembering what happened to you will no longer feel like reliving it, and the related feelings will be much more manageable.”-Cleveland Clinic

We’ll first gather information on your life, upbringing, and relationships to assess what themes and memory networks may be getting activated. After mutually deciding on the memory network(s) to target and problem you want to work on, we’ll work together to help you develop the skills need to keep your body grounded and calm. These grounding skills will help you be able to go from feeling anxious or activated, to more relaxed and in control. The skills we’ll work on in session are skills I use as well, which we’ll adapt to your individual needs. After learning how to keep your body regulated, we’ll gather a list of memories associated with these negative themes and look for any current situations, people, or places that are triggering to you. From there, we’ll have you bring up a target memory with the images, negative thoughts, feelings, and body sensations and use BLS to process the memory. These memories will then shift in nature and your brain will discover new meanings associated with the experiences. For example, initially someone who has been through a car accident may think, “I’m not safe,” but through EMDR they may develop a new belief such as “I’m safe now and made it through.” The new meanings developed in EMDR come from your brain’s own healing capacities, not my interpretations. You’re the one discovering and making these new meanings and your brain is doing the healing work through it’s own strength and knowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What types of issues can EMDR treat?

  • EMDR can be utilized to treat a variety of conditions. While most-widely known for its treatment of complex trauma and PTSD, EMDR has also been found to be successful in treating Dissociative Disorders (Dissociative Identity Disorder, Depersonalization/Derealization), Anxiety Disorders (Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Specific Phobias, Social Phobia), Depression (Major Depressive Disorder, Persistent Depressive Disorder), Eating Disorders, OCD, medical trauma, relational trauma and more.

• How long does this take?

  • The time it takes to process memories can vary from person to person. With single-incident traumas, sometimes memories can be processed in a few sessions. Other clients have more complex histories, and trauma networks can weave together. Typically, processing gets faster after we get through the first few memories and a “generalization effect” occurs. What this means is the positive information and body healing that occurs in one memory starts to spread throughout the memory network to other memories. When this happens, the distress levels of other memories go down, at times making it so memories that were once distressing, don’t need to be reprocessed with BLS at all. For clients wanting to process memories more quickly, “intensive” sessions can be scheduled. Intensive sessions are multi-hour sessions focused on working through as much of a memory as possible.

• Can EMDR be done online or virtually?

  • Yes! There are over 20 peer-reviewed articles about doing EMDR virtually-EMDRIA. About a quarter of my clients chose to reprocess these memories from the comfort of their own homes.

• Can EMDR be self-administered?

  • Unfortunately, no. During EMDR, there’s times where clients can get “stuck” and need some guidance on how to get through the blocks that occur during processing. Additionally, trauma processing requires connection, grace, and compassion to heal. Part of the healing is through our relationship and allowing someone to hear your story.