Some of you reading this may have heard of EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing, and some of you may not. EMDR was developed in the 80’s as a treatment for trauma, which many at the time associated with acute traumatic incidents such as involvement in a violent altercation, or perhaps experiencing sexual abuse or rape. While these incidents are unquestionably traumatic and can be effectively treated using EMDR, more contemporary research suggests that acute traumatic incidents such as these are only the tip of the iceberg as far as issues that EMDR can be effectively used in addressing. Trauma Theory suggests that a myriad of different mental and behavioral health diagnoses can be the result of unaddressed trauma in a person’s life. Both acute incidents and series of impactful negative experiences in an individual’s life can be stored in the brain (and the body, but that’s a discussion for later) as trauma. You see, trauma is individualized, which means that what might be internalized as a traumatic experience for one person might not be for someone else.

For example, let’s say you have been working at a demanding job for years in which your supervisor is often demeaning or hypercritical of you and your work performance. As time goes on, you begin to feel increasingly anxious and depressed about the prospect of going to work. You dread interacting with others because you fear that word will get back to your boss, and begin becoming increasingly socially isolated over time. Each interaction with your superior reinforces this thinking and you begin receiving reprimands as the quality of your work begins to diminish. Perhaps you notice yourself beginning to drink more to deal with the stress, or perhaps you have difficulty maintaining healthy sleep patterns, or eating regular healthy meals. Eventually the stress becomes so great that it is impacting every dimension of your life and you begin feeling as though there is no way out other than quitting your job and facing financial insecurity. In this example alone, we are seeing a conglomerate of different mental health diagnoses; anxiety, depression, social phobia, abuse, eating disorder, and sleep disorder, to name a few. And while these could potentially all be credible diagnoses for a client presenting with these concerns, Trauma Theory might presuppose that these are reactions associated with what the emotional center of your brain, or your Limbic system, has internalized as traumatic.

So if you were dealing with this situation, you might be asking yourself “why can’t I just get past this and do my job?” All of us like to believe that we can simply rise to the occasion, set these feelings aside and get the job done, but as the symptoms and stressors continue to mount, most of us would begin wondering why we things keep getting worse despite our willpower and best efforts. The reason this continues to be an issue really has little to do with effort, but rather with the way that trauma is stored in the brain. While there are many parts of the brain, for our purposes, this conversation centers around three main regions; the Neocortex, the Brain Stem and the aforementioned LImbic system. The Neocortex is basically the grey squiggly cover of the brain that you see when you look at an image of the brain. This region of the Brain is responsible for things like logic, reason, time management and organization, and might be considered the “executive function” center of the brain. Next we have the Brain Stem, which is at the back and base of the brain, runs down into the spinal column, and branches out into the central nervous system. This part of the brain is responsible for what we consider motor function, or basically what the body does. Functions of the signals sent from the brain stem include heart rate, breathing, muscle tension and sweating as a few examples. Finally we have the LImbic system, which, as mentioned earlier is considered the emotional memory center of the brain, where our life experiences and feelings about them are kept. Therefore, it may come as no surprise that the LImbic system is where our traumatic memories are stored.

When trauma, like the series of volatile interactions you might have with your boss in the example, becomes stored in the LImbic system, these traumatic memories can become triggered by the daily interactions that remind the individual of the initial trauma. For example, If you were repeatedly berated by your boss about some aspect of your work, even the mention of the subject by a coworker perhaps can trigger a response that reverberates through all three regions of the brain. You see, when the negative emotional memory is triggered, the limbic system “lights up” and high-jacks both the Neocortex, and the brain stem. Because the neocortex is taken over, you stop thinking logically and reasonably, and perhaps begins making sloppy mistakes or even poor decisions. Additionally, because the Brain Stem is high-jacked as well, you may begin experiencing shortness of breath, an increased heart rate, muscle tension, or perhaps sweating or even lightheadedness, all of which can be an indicator that you are experiencing traumatic recall. When triggered repeatedly, you may begin engaging in increasingly erratic behavior in frantic attempts to squash the responses you are experiencing, furthering the distress you are experiencing across dimensions in your life.

So how does EMDR help to resolve these issues? Well EMDR uses something called “bilateral stimulation” (Visual, auditory, or tactile left to right stimulation), along with ordered prompts and cues, that are developed with your therapist, to “call up” these traumatic memories and reprocess them. This process engages your Brain Stem, LImbic system, and your Neocortex, getting them to fire back online, working the way they are intended, to reprocess the traumatic memory and aid you in engaging in situations that might have previously triggered traumatic recall. It’s not that EMDR erases a person’s memory of a traumatic event, or makes a negative traumatic experience feel like a positive one, but rather, it helps to remove the negative emotional charge that the person experiences when triggered. A lot of clients claim that the process feels transformative, and almost magical, but these results should not be expected and are not guaranteed, especially at first. Like any therapy, EMDR is a process, and intended results may take time. If you are interested in scheduling an appoint for EMDR, or any other form of therapy we engage in at Today Has Purpose, please give us a call at your nearest convenience and schedule an appointment today. We look forward to working with you soon.