​Understanding How EMDR Works For Trauma
 

EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING (EMDR)

• Our minds have the natural capacity to process what happens to us in a healthy adaptive way. Some experiences can be so stressful and distressing that they overwhelm this natural process (rumination and unwanted intrusions about the future can also overwhelm the natural process).
• When the past/future experience is highly distressing, it is stored in a way that mimics the experience (e.g., same body sensations, same perceptions, same beliefs, same images). Oftentimes, the fuel to mental disturbances may be a set of unprocessed, undigested memories.
• EMDR helps to remove this disruption. The mind can actively heal by engaging this natural process using bilateral simulation (e.g., eye movements, etc.) while holding a distressing memory/future scenario in your mind. This dual attention assists in ‘turning on’ this natural adaptive process, which involve the amygdala (alarm center); hippocampus (memory); and the prefrontal cortex (behavior & emotions).
• Preparation for this “emotional surgery” involves learning strategies to enhance body recalibration, present-moment awareness, and self-soothing. 
• Successful EMDR therapy resolves the fight/flight/freeze response. You will still experience emotions related to the memory, but the level of distress that you originally had will be reprocessed and stored in a healthy, non-distressing way.

“EMDR allows the brain to heal from experiences that were traumatic or adverse or overwhelming by allowing the brain to process that information and to store it in a way where the brain now knows, ‘I’m in a different circumstance, that’s not happening to me anymore,’”.- Byrd

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** Adapted from article written by Jason N. Linder, PsyD for Psychology Today