What is EMDR?
I hear many of my clients express “I know mentally I’m safe now, but I don’t feel safe” or “I cognitively understand things are different now, but a part of me still fears it will happen again”.
These statements reflect the way that traumatic experiences are encoded not only in our prefrontal cortex (logic, computing, learning part of brain), but also in our limbic system (emotion, sensation, survival response center). Typical talk-therapy and CBT are wonderful at addressing how we understand logically what happened to us (“I know its not my fault, I did the best I could at the time, I am safe now”), but that only goes so deep in our nervous system. EMDR helps us target the limbic system so that the whole body understands these adaptive responses to the past.
EMDR does this through using “bilateral stimulation” which is specific types of back and forth movement of the body (eye movement, tapping on our shoulders, hand-held buzzers, etc.). Bilateral stimulation integrates the left and right brain hemispheres and activates deeper processing. It’s a comforting, rhythmic process that naturally supports the nervous system and is thought to be similar to what takes place during REM sleep, where our eyes move back and forth as we process the day’s information.
What does an EMDR session look like? We start by identifying a current symptom or personal dynamic you’re wanting to shift, and identifying what experiences in the past may be informing it. We will then take note of the feelings, thoughts, and sensations that accompany that past experience. While you hold these in mind, I will guide you through short sets of bilateral stimulation where we allow the brain to freely process what comes up. I will be checking in with you in between sets to help you integrate the information and gently guide you along. Essentially, we are letting the brain run through what happened in a gentle and contained way with bilateral stimulation, with the aim to desensitize and update the neural circuitry. Instead of your brain remaining stuck in the moment of terror of what happened, we aim to update the system to an adaptive or more reparative understanding of what happened.
What is the difference between EMDR and Attachment-Focused EMDR? To put it simply, Attachment-Focused EMDR is a more flexible type of EMDR that takes different client needs and cultural factors into consideration. Due to its flexibility and its focus on the client feeling seen and accommodated by the therapist, it focuses on a restorative therapeutic relationship to heal relational trauma. It includes specific training and interventions in working with complex trauma (collections of upsetting experiences over time) and in healing wounds of unmet emotional or physical needs in childhood.
