EMDR stands for “Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing” and is a way to re-work  the way bad memories are stored in the brain.   EMDR was founded by psychologist, Dr. Francine Shapiro 20 years ago.  She was walking across a park and realized that if she moved her eyes back-and-forth while thinking about something disturbing, the intensity of the memory would dissipate.   From that experience, Dr. Shapiro, along with several of her associates, developed the treatment modality of EMDR.  It is now a well-researched and highly developed way to work with people who have experienced disturbing events in their lives and for whom the bad feelings, images and memories don’t just go away.

What do you mean by trauma?

There are two types of trauma:  Big ‘T’ and Little ‘t’. 

Big ‘T’ trauma consists of experiences that were obviously traumatic, such as, experiencing a life-threatening event or seeing someone else experience one.  Being attacked by a spouse or loved-one, car crash, or early childhood experiences that were scary and frightening, such as experiencing some sort of physical, sexual or emotional abuse.  When you talk about a Big ‘T’ trauma, common sense tells you it was bad. 

The other type of trauma, Little ‘t’ is much more subtle.  It is the type of life-experience that, on the surface, seems like ‘not big deal.’  Things such as seeing your parents argue, having a pet taken away or die, not getting chosen as a cheerleader or for a sport, getting picked-on; essential, events that happen over-and-over and are not every really resolved or taken care of.

How does EMDR work?

As life is happening, the brain is constantly gathering, filtering and storing information.  Most of the information it receives gets ‘resolved’ and ‘integrated’ in the cerebral cortex (fluffy part of the brain) as it processes through the mind. 

Trauma information - shock, upset, or highly charged disturbances - is processed differently.  When life-threatening experiences hit the brain, the normal processing channels are shut down and ‘trauma processing’ takes over.  You’re in ‘survival mode’.   When this happens, the left (logical) brain shuts down and the information streaming through the senses is captured by the right (creative) brain with the worst of it (most traumatic) being stored in the mid region of the brain. 

When trauma happens, body/mind goes into fight, flight or freeze mode.  Survival is all that counts.  You’re in the present moment whether you want to be or not.

The problem is that after the disturbance stops the brain carries the memories of the disturbance long into the future.   Those memories may be disturbing images, unpleasant angry, sad, or fearful emotions, anxious body sensations and disparaging thoughts about the self.  They are stored in the amygdala and hippocampus as hardened, fractured memories immediately accessible and always available on demand. 

Another thing is that memories are ‘associative’, which means that the good stuff groups together in the ‘adaptive’ neuro-pathways and the bad stuff clumps together in ‘maladaptive‘ neuro-pathways.   That means that when bad memories of images, unpleasant emotions, and bad body feelings are triggered it lets loose a whole stream of more of the same; it becomes a downward spiral of bad feelings - fear, anger and helplessness. 

These memories are stuck  in the limbic system (mid-brain) and while they are hard to get rid of they are easily triggered and they get replayed over-and-over.   There is usually little or no awareness of what is happening; that is, you may not even know where the bad feelings are coming from or even what caused them originally, or triggered them in the present.

‘Talking-about-experiences’ helps but all too often it doesn’t  do enough.  Prescription drugs such as anti-depressant or anti-anxiety medications can help you cope with symptoms even though they don’t solve the underlying problem.    Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been shown to help but because it deals mainly with ‘thinking at the surface level’ and because the source of the problem problem - mal-adaptively stored emotion -  is below the level of thought, it is not the complete answer.  Changing thinking doesn’t change the feelings which drive them, at the lowest level. 

Illegal drugs and alcohol can seem to help but they merely masks symptoms, which slowly over time, tend to get worse and worse.   Some form of self-denigration and self-destruction are all too often the outcome.

With EMDR, we re-visit the disturbances and reawaken the images, emotions, body sensations and negative feelings about the self.  When we do that, we also use bilateral stimulation (eye-movements, sound or tapping) to let the brain re-process the stored bad feelings, thoughts and body sensations.  When that happens, the brain has a way of re-encoding the trauma information and it becomes resolved and integrated; which means, you are desensitized from the bad feelings of the experience and thoughts are based on the ‘facts’ of actual situation and not so much on the underlying negative feelings.

Is it like hypnosis, am I in a trance?

No.  It is not like hypnosis.  You are fully present with your experience while the brain does its reprocessing.

Is it like counseling where all we do is talk about our problems?

No.  Think of it like a procedure in which memories are allowed to be re-thought, re-stored, and re-processed.

How long does it take if I do EMDR?

That depends on the person and the extent of the trauma.  Traumas that were long term or repeated several times can take longer to resolve.  People who were treated poorly as children and then have recent trauma on top of that will take longer. 

The usual course of treatment goes as follows:

    Sessions 1 to 3 are for history gathering, calm place exercise and delineating ‘target’ events. 

   

    Sessions 3 to 5 are for EMDR processing.

    Session 6 is used to reevaluate effectiveness and target quality.

    Sessions 7 and above.  Clear out targets, re-education and developing tools for emotional maturity. 

How long does it take if I don’t do EMDR?

It is possible to live your entire life carrying emotional wounds and traumas from the past without ever getting resolution.   Are you sure that’s what you want?