What is EMDR?
EMDR is a type of therapy based on eye movement or dual-activation of simultaneous sides of the brain/body, using a function that the brain already uses when we sleep (REM – rapid eye movement). Research has shown that this type of therapy is beneficial for many issues including trauma, whether this is from the past such as childhood experiences of neglect and abuse, or from a recent experience of being injured in a car crash.
EMDR can work through, or process, the emotion from memories and can ‘take the sting’ out of past events however, it will not erase any memories. EMDR can be helpful for any memory or experience that we find problematic – and so we can use it to help us with anything that we feel is holding us back from living a life that we love, and not just trauma.
How does EMDR work?
In order to get a handle on how EMDR works, we need to know a little about how the brain functions. If we are to simplify the brain into three parts, we have the base of the brain at the back, the cerebellum, which governs everything we don’t need to think about such as heart rate and breathing – our automatic functions. The second part is the limbic brain which is the very centre of the brain. This part takes information from our emotions and is closely connected to our internal body processes. The limbic brain is where our instincts and our flight, fight or freeze responses are activated from. The third part of our brain is the large folded area, the neocortex which takes in information from our external world from our senses and puts words to things, puts them in a timeline and tries to understand experiences and file them away under different ‘headings.’ The neocortex can take some time to consider how to react to things sometimes.
When the limbic brain is activated by a threatening experience, it has to take over, in order to ensure we react instinctively, straight away, so that we protect ourselves. The limbic brain will compromise the third part of our brain – the neocortex – so that it has control instead. Often we hear of people who have experienced an environmental disaster saying ‘I was already running away from the scene before I realised what was happening.’ This is entirely understandable since the neocortex was offline whilst the limbic brain took control to ensure their safety and it was only when the person was safe, that the neocortex then came back online and became aware of the situation. If the neocortex had been in control of the reaction here, it may have taken too long to react – even a few seconds can be too long in a life threatening situation.
Therefore, when we experience a distressing event, the memory of it – which includes how we felt at the time – is usually stored in the limbic brain, because it was the limbic brain that was aware of the event whilst the neocortex was compromised. The limbic brain’s job is to keep us safe, so it will hold onto the memory just in case we experience a similar event and need to react quickly for our survival. Whenever we experience one aspect that was similar to the original distressing event – even if this aspect on its own may be of no threat to us at all – the limbic brain will re-present the memory to us, along with all the raw emotion from that event – and we start to feel as though we were back at that time. We may also experience other symptoms that make us feel out of control. We may feel as though we are going crazy because we logically know that the current situation should not be distressing but we are feeling and reacting as though it is. These are traumatic stress symptoms, and are just caused by strong emotions that have not yet been processed. This is due to the fact that the limbic brain cannot cannot process the experiences however, the neocortex can, and EMDR can assist in doing this.
EMDR therapy uses the REM (rapid eye movement) function to activate the brain to focus on a distressing memory held in the limbic brain, and then to make it available for the neocortex to process that memory. This function works with the emotional aspect of the memory and allows the brain to store the memory in the neocortex area of the brain instead. People who have had EMDR therapy report that they are able to recall the memory of a distressing event without so much of the emotional content, such as the anxiety, panic or fear reaction come back to them.