What is EMDR?
EMDR (or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy) has become increasingly popular over the past few years, but not everyone knows how it works or how it differs from “regular therapy” - they just hear that it works like magic!
While it’s not actually magic that makes EMDR so transformative for so many clients, it does create change a lot more quickly than traditional talk therapy. The key to that is the bilateral stimulation (or BLS) which are the movements back and forth that you use while thinking about distressing events. Have you ever seen someone in a deep sleep whose eyes are moving back and forth under their eye lids? That’s from REM sleep, which is when your brain heals and grows during the sleep cycle. BLS activates that same mechanism, which helps move information from the emotional part of your brain to the rational part of your brain. Why is this important? Because information that is stored in the emotional part of your brain is likely to cause those reactions or thought patterns that you hate. When someone feels “triggered,” it means that something in activating memories from the emotional brain, and the emotional brain thinks that bad things are happening to you again.
Before you get into any actual memory reprocessing, you and your therapist will do some work to understand exactly what you’re working on and why and make sure you feel confident in being able to regulate your emotions during and after sessions. Once you decide what memory you want to start with, the actual reprocessing (the “magic,” if you will) begins! You bring to mind the memory, identify the worst part as you’re thinking about it now, and identify an image that comes to mind when you think of that worst part. Then, you identify a negative belief about yourself as you think of this image, and a positive belief you’d like to believe when you think about this memory after reprocessing. You check in to see how true that positive belief feels (most clients say it feels absolutely untrue), and then notice how the image and negative belief are feeling in the moment - what emotions are coming up, how distressing it feels, and where that distress is sitting in the body.
Once the memory is “set up,” as we say, the BLS begins. You think about this memory, how it feels, how your body feels, while moving your eyes back and forth, tapping your arms or legs on alternating sides, listening to a sound alternating between each ear, or using buzzers that alternate a buzzing feeling in each hand. Then you check in with your therapist, who will help you determine where to go next. Sometimes you stay within the memory you’re working on, sometimes it’s an emotion or feeling in your body, or sometimes it’s a different memory - your brain will lead you where it needs to go in order to finish reprocessing. You do this until you think about the original memory and your body feels calm. Many clients can’t believe that they actually feel calm at the end, but it truly is possible! After that, you think about the original memory while doing BLS and thinking about the positive belief so that it feels absolutely true. Once your body is calm and that positive belief feels true, you’re done with that memory!
Tune in for more blog posts about these negative and positive beliefs and how EMDR can be used for different kinds of problems!
