How does EMDR do this?
By moving the eyes side to side we are calming the amygdala whilst the hippocampus retrieves the memory. We desensitise by moving the eyes side to side telling the amygdala we are busy and active and by reducing it’s reactivity and volatility to zero.
The amygdyla is relaxed and the hippocampus is cleansed. All the while, the hippocampus is not damaged and all associations with our cognitions are left intact.
Let’s go back to dream works and why dreaming is so important. You may not remember your dreams but that’s ok. Your brain is busy 24/7 and is considered the most creative at night. There is a theory that the logical part of the brain is quieter and the imaginative colourful creative brain is busy making masterpieces.
The brain, like the body wants to heal. Trauma is a ‘stop sign’ and is stuck and the healing process is impeded as it keeps alerting us to perils. This sounds all exhausting and so sleep is the ointment to the daily grind. So, I believe that usually, sleep and dreams don’t want to wake us, so it weaves a phantastical tapestry that is busy whilst not waking us or disturbing us. The brain, with the help of melatonin is giving us a cerebral and body soothing healing bath and who does not love a tranquil sleep.
Let’s say that usual, non-disturbing, experiences are a A4 piece of paper, that Dream works is placing in our personal symbols system via our own associations filing system. And the dream secretary wants to close drawers and clear the system, so that we are refreshed for the next day. To give you an example:
You may have had a dream with 8 elephants wearing trainers. This may have come about due to an earlier conversation you had with a colleague at the office that day. You were sharing your experiences of admiring elephants in a safari, when you were 8 years old wearing your most favourite trainers. It is like a surrealist film or poem in a way. Quick connections and symbols with great metaphors and analogies.
So going back to trauma and pieces of paper, then trauma is more like a big spikey piece of paper that is much bigger and very awkward to put in the file and thus never shuts the file. So not surprising we keep hurting ourselves with the open drawer. Clumsily banging into it. It is left open wide and therefore is live and very easily accessible. If a traumatic association is left active, we are more wired for action and hyper alert. Explaining why we are so easily triggered, ever ready; more jumpy and fearful. Sounds, senses, smells and images are even more high definition and quickly echoes and reverberates us back to the trauma. Always under the surface or omnipresent in the background, ready to fire up so we can react accordingly.
Again this is where EMDR is uncannily efficient. It softens the picture and all sensations and feelings, eventually reducing it to an ungraspable non recollection. Once to nil and the memory is blurred to nothing the file is then renamed as such with a positive title. The cleaning is finalised with a body scan just to make sure that all areas are covered and there are no somatic residues.
Many patients who have tried EMDR are amazed at how they cannot relocate or access the emotional heat and urgency attached to the event or even see the original file or picture we chose to work with. Some of my clients say when moving their eyes that it’s like rubbing away and erasing the memory. A few clients have looked at me incredulously when first moving their eyes side to side but all the more are pleasantly surprised of the results. And I quote some as saying that it ‘saved’ them. It is one of the most non intrusive types of therapies that can cleanly access issues without unnecessarily re-activating the trauma. It blunts in a way the force of the trauma and flips the negative association into a positive one. EMDR does not only help with Trauma, but can help with Anxiety, phobias, fears, lack of confidence, OCD and addictive behaviours.
If not too keen on talk therapy or wanting too much analysis or put off by long term psychoanalytic therapy; then EMDR is possibly what you are looking for. Why not give it a try?
