What is EMDR and how does it work?
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The way my therapist described it, it’s a method of reprogramming the emotional attachment the brain puts on certain memories
Every time we access a memory, it is “refiles” somewhere else. EMDR is a way to interrupt the emotion attached to the memory and insert a more benign emotion
EMDR originally involved eye movements of varying speed crossing the body’s midline, as a part of psychological therapy in order to treat trauma/PTSD. The underlying theory is that the rapid eye movements that occur in REM (rapid eye movement) sleep are not just byproducts of the short-term to long-term memory processing that happens when we are dreaming, but that they facilitate that process. To go into it a little more, when you look to your left the right hemisphere of your brain is stimulated, and vice versa. These hemispheres are mostly separate but connected by the corpus callosum. The rapid eye movements in REM stimulate both hemispheres of the brain in sequence and support information transfer through the corpus callosum. Normally this is simple for the brain to do, but when people experience trauma the information does not always process well. The brain perceives a threat continuing to occur in the present, even if the stressor was in the past. The eye movements in EMDR attempt to stimulate the normal memory processing that occurs in dreaming, in an awake brain, to allow the traumatic event to be catagorized as a past experience.
EMDR has since been validated as effective for other conditions in addition to PTSD, and it no longer specifically requires eye movement as there are other means to accomplish the bi-lateral stimulation (via tapping, hand buzzers, and other methods) but the name stuck
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