What is EMDR and how does EMDR work?
Written by an EMDR Therapist in Long Beach.
You have different levels of your memory. Some memories are in your long-term memory but some are even deeper / farther. Some can only be accessed by a paired memory. For example, you are in school and learn from a teacher during a lesson that people who are not aware of their body tend to hit themselves a lot by running into things because they miss judge the amount of space they need to pass by something. Maybe 10 years go by and you don’t remember that random fact, even though you hit yourself a lot. Then you are in a yoga class and they talk about being “one” with your body and you have a hard time focusing in on your body. The instructor talks about being detached and BAM you remember what you learned in school a long time ago. You would have never thought of that memory otherwise, but the new experience triggered an old memory to come up.
This process happens all the time with people and most of the time we aren’t aware of the link or how exactly our brain “organizes files (memories) in our brain”
Imagine this example: A kid is beat up in middle school by a bunch of bullies, and one of them winked at the kid when they left, after they were beat up. Then 20 years later, that kid grows up and is married. Their spouse winks at them out of love and the person has a weird, negative, “over reaction”.
As our body reacts to similar memories we had in the past, we don’t know why we are reacting so strongly, but our body has stored “red flags” in our brain that will react when we experience that “red flag” again so that we will be protected this time. EMDR works to help you to link these memories so you see the connection and then can actually do something about it. For example, working with an EMDR therapist can help you connect that the reason you are triggered by your spouse has nothing to do with your spouse and actually has to do with an experience (an adverse life experience) that you had as a child. Once you can connect those two things, then your body can remove the red flag that it put on the winking and you can move on in your life without that trigger constantly warning you that there is danger.