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We think of therapy, particularly eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, as re-wiring the brain, and that can be an effective analogy. It helps you completely change your cognitions and the unconscious responses that you have to triggers.
We want to talk a little bit more about how that happens.
EMDR has been considered the gold standard of trauma treatment for decades. It’s based in neuroscience, and uses a combination of natural brain processes and talk therapy to ease the distress of traumatic memories.
During a session, your therapist will use bilateral stimulation. All this means is you’ll either follow an object with your eyes from side to side or listen to sounds played into alternating ears. While this happens, your therapist will guide you through your traumatic memories, which helps you think of them without feeling emotional distress.
Each and every counselor at inner Balance receive extensive and in-depth EMDR training. Read our full guide on EMDR to learn more about what it looks like, and why we use it to treat trauma.
Trauma affects the memories of past events and how we access them in the present.
The most common analogy is thinking of your memory storage like a filing cabinet. Typically, your brain stores memories in specific drawers and you can access them at any time. You can file them away when you’re done, and the emotion attached to that memory dissipates until you open it back up.
Traumatic memories are chaotic. They’re the papers that are in the wrong drawer, unorganized, sticking out everywhere, and blocking your access to other files.
Those traumatic memories can disrupt the way you normally feel about things or interpret the past. For example, let’s say you were in a car accident and sustained an injury. You may be scared to drive or even get in a car when you had no issues before. You may feel anxious driving past the spot where the accident happened, or even feel resentment or mistrust towards the loved one who was driving.
The reason that traumatic memories are “filed” wrong is because of the body’s physiological trauma response. Essentially, during trauma, your body’s sympathetic nervous system kicks in, and you involuntarily get ready to fight or flee. Part of this response is to stop “seeing” what is happening and let your instincts take over, “feeling” what is happening instead.
These feelings and instincts get recorded in your brain as a “somatic memory.” Recalling traumatic events is more re-lived than remembered.
EMDR is a way to help you file away those traumatic memories so that they’re stored in the right place and don’t cause you distress all of the time. Because it taps into natural neural pathways, it’s easy to think of it as rewiring your brain.
EMDR doesn’t create new pathways or neural networks. Instead, it makes the existing pathways function better and flow more freely in the right direction.
That bilateral stimulation we mentioned earlier is the key to EMDR.
It mimics the eye movements we do during REM sleep, which is the stage of sleep where we process memories. This allows information to move from temporary storage in the hippocampus to permanent storage in the frontal cortex. And it’s not just facts of what happened—you also process the emotions tied to those memories.
When you experience trauma, the pathways that create long-term memories get clogged up because of that sympathetic nervous system response. Bilateral stimulation straightens the pathway from the physical memory to the somatic and emotional memory.
When you combine bilateral stimulation with talk therapy, you can clear those pathways and remember the traumatic event more objectively.
You’ll talk through the memory during bilateral stimulation. As your brain opens those connections of memory, you become desensitized to it. From there, you can reframe cognitions about yourself and your past trauma more positively.
All of our therapists are trained in EMDR. We combine it with other kinds of trauma therapy, including parts work, CBT, and ACT, not just to resolve your trauma, but to make sure you thrive every day going forward.
Call us today to start the conversation. We want to help you feel better.
We're privileged to call ourselves a trauma-informed practice. We understand how diverse the effects of trauma can be, and how trauma is connected to other mental health concerns. Learn how we treat trauma and get you on your way to mental wellness.
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