A significant part of my psychotherapy practice focus on helping clients to process psychological trauma. To that aid, I use different trauma therapy methods, one of which is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing).
When we experience any kind of traumatic event, depending on its severity, our brain activates our necessary internal defenses ~ fight, flight, or freeze responses ~ to protect the wounds inflicted upon us as a means for survival. Our attempts to numb the physical, emotional, and intellectual responses to whatever terrifying experience we have had are natural to our very being.
The degree of self-protection is equal to the severity of the wound itself. However, the protective shields we utilized when the trauma happened can, over time, transform into destructive coping skills, which are keeping us trapped in painful and harmful emotional, cognitive, somatic, and behavioral patterns, instead of helping us to heal the trauma and free us from the unwanted internal imprisonment.
Not uncommonly, one moment can become “frozen in time,” and remembering what happened can feel as bad as it did when the event occurred, because the images, thoughts, sounds, smells, and feelings haven’t changed. Memories like that have a lasting negative effect that may interfere with the way we see ourselves, the world and the way we relate to other people.
Although it is not exactly known how any form of psychotherapy works neuro-biologically, in the brain, we know that when we experience a trauma, our brain cannot process information as it usually does. Remembering what happened can feel as bad as it did going through it the first time, because the images, sounds, smells, and feelings haven’t changed. The “trauma-memory-networks” seem to “cut off” all communication with “adaptive-information-networks.” Further, the trauma-memory can get triggered by any kind of related or associated experience, and has the potential to make you feel as powerless or upset as you did when the original trauma happened. It’s like “the bridge” between the only island and the mainland is torn down, and you feel stuck at a place from which there is “no escape.”
EMDR (or other forms of bi-lateral stimulation), appears to “build the necessary bridge” between the right hemisphere of the brain where the trauma memory is stored, over to the left hemisphere, which stores important thoughts and awareness needed to relieve the distress. It is like pieces of a puzzle coming together into a complete picture. You still remember what happened, but it is less upsetting, it is “just a memory.”
David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D., after having learned about EMDR during a lecture by Francine Shapiro, PhD, the originator of EMDR, he became curious about this method of therapy. He took the EMDR Institutes’ basic training, and started to use it right away in his practice. “…He said the following: It worked from the first day and I was hooked. That’s the story. I think it happens to everybody. It is surprising to see something work so well. ” Luber, M. (2011). In celebration of: David Servan-Schreiber. EMDRIANewsletter, September 2011, 12-15.
In his first book, “The Instinct to Heal,” David Servan-Schreiber, wrote:” … The thrust of EMDR is to evoke the traumatic memory in all of its components-visual, emotional, cognitive, and, most of all, physical (the echo of the memory in the body), and to then ask the patient to simply follow the hand of the therapist moving rapidly back and forth in front of his or her face in order to induce the appropriate eye movements. This process then stimulates the inborn “adaptive information-processing system” that has not been successful in metabolizing the dysfunctional memory by itself.” (p. 81, Electronic book version)
Mindful Trauma Therapy ~ Federal Way, WA 