What is EMDR? EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a powerful therapy that helps the brain and body process unresolved memories and experiences of trauma. Rather than talking through every detail, EMDR supports your natural healing process so that past pain feels less charged and more integrated. It’s a way of helping your nervous system find balance and safety again.
I love EMDR because it goes beyond talk therapy. When we engage in talk therapy, we’re missing a crucial piece of the puzzle – the body. EMDR is truly a holistic based therapy, it engages our mind (through thoughts), body (through sensations and impulses), emotions and brain (increasing neuroplasticity).
You’re probably asking, how does EMDR work? EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (eyes moving side to side, or buzzers pulsating in hands back and forth) to engage both hemispheres of the brain, basically helping your brain to keep one foot in the present (for safety) and one foot in the past (for reprocessing past memories).
We start with the symptom or issue you want to work on (maybe it’s social anxiety or people pleasing, it can be anything really) then we connect that issue with a recent memory that feels charged or uncomfortable, then we connect that recent memory with past memories that feel similar. A therapist helps you move through this process seamlessly.
Let’s say we are working with social anxiety. Once we find a past memory to target (perhaps it’s at a social event where you felt humiliated), then we identify the following: the worst part of that memory as an image (the face of the person who humiliated you), the negative belief we have about ourselves (maybe you thought “I am stupid” as you were humiliated), our feelings/emotions (embarrassed, lonely, angry), and sensations in the body (heat in the chest or arms, tightness in chest). We pull all of those details into our awareness and start bilateral stimulation (I use hand buzzers in my office). Once we start the buzzing, you allow your mind to free associate around all of those details, sometimes taking you away from the target memory and into other memories that might be related (consciously or unconsciously). Your brain does this on it’s own, there’s no forcing here.
Eventually, all on its own, your brain starts to adapt to the past memory, meaning it sees it in a new way. You might start to realize, the person who humiliated you was self-conscious and their humiliation said more about them than you. You really start to feel this wholeheartedly not just think it. Perhaps the memory feels further away and less triggering, or not at all triggering anymore. It doesn’t erase the memory, it just changes the way our brain stores it, so it doesn’t affect us in our current life.
It’s truly incredible to be free from past experiences that are painful or triggering. Interested in trying EMDR? I offer EMDR therapy in my office in Denver, Colorado, located in Highlands Square or virtual from anywhere in CO. Book a free 20 minute consultation here!