What is EMDR Therapy?

You’ve heard people talk about EMDR, but what is it? EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a special therapeutic way to process trauma and painful or disturbing memories, resulting in far less emotional impact in the present. This can help you feel more calm, improve your sleep, and change your relationships.

Do I Need Therapy For My Trauma?

You may benefit from therapy – EMDR or otherwise – if the following applies to you:

• If you are experiencing recurrent disturbing nightmares about something terrible that happened in your past
• If you avoid thinking about, talking about, or being reminded of a difficult event, and this is causing problems in your life
• If you feel like you are always on guard for danger, and feel like you rarely can feel safe and relaxed
• If you have uncontrollable anger outbursts

(This is not a complete list)

What Causes Trauma?

When we experience something meaningful, whether positive or negative, there is an emotional experience tied to the event or memory. When we experience big, overwhelming, difficult emotions, the brain may say, “I can’t deal with all of this right now!” Instead of becoming just one more day in the history of our life, the traumatic memory can get stuck, unprocessed, in its own little delicate emotional bubble. When this happens, it’s like a painful wound you can’t touch. You don’t want to talk about it or think about it, because nobody wants to be in pain. When something accidentally touches on it, it’s very unpleasant, and sometimes confusing. EMDR helps to digest the “bubble,” reduce the pain, and absorb it into the rest of your memory banks.

Why Do EMDR?

When a memory (or collection of experiences) remains unprocessed and not fully integrated, it can be just as vivid and disturbing as the day(s) it happened. That memory bubble may be jostled by current experiences, despite a trauma survivor’s efforts (both conscious and unconscious) to keep it undisturbed. This happens even when a trigger may not seem similar or related to the original trauma, and it hurts like hell. This undigested bubble of pain can create all kinds of problems in our relationships, our moods, and our general functioning.

EMDR is one method that helps to deflate the bubble, to digest the pain, and to efficiently integrate the memories into the archives. EMDR does this, simply put, by adding “bilateral stimulation” to exploration of the memory. This is believed to help digest and integrate the memory, and remove its emotional power.

What is “Bilateral Stimulation”?

This is the EM of EMDR, which stands for eye movement. Bilateral (bi = two, lateral = sides) refers to both sides of the body and brain, and moving the eyes back and forth, side to side, is believed to help with this digestion and neutralization of traumatic memories. However, EMDR as a practice has also expanded to include other types of bilateral stimulation, including sounds and touch.

How Does EMDR Work?

Have you heard of REM sleep? REM stands for rapid eye movement. When we dream, we are generally in REM sleep, and this is when our brain is digesting its information and stowing it away in the appropriate parts of the brain. EMDR is believed to work in a similar manner.

EMDR is an evidence-based approach, which means that scientific studies have shown its effectiveness. Like any treatment, that doesn’t mean it works for everyone all of the time, or that it is necessarily the preferred approach for your situation. But it is an excellent tool to have in the toolbox.

Does EMDR Work For Religious Trauma?

It sure can! While EMDR was originally developed to treat trauma in war veterans and others with overtly violent experiences, it can also be used for complex trauma. Religious trauma is a type of complex trauma, which means that the painful bubble wasn’t created by one big event (like a car accident). Instead, you’ve experienced a series of events, such as experiencing abuse or neglect over time. If you experienced things like conversion therapy as an LGBTQ+ person, or have lingering symptoms like fear of hell (when you don’t consciously believe in it anymore), you may benefit from EMDR therapy.

Are All Disturbing Experiences Considered To Be Trauma?

Difficult or scary events are not always traumatic. Perhaps you can think of something awful or really difficult that happened to you that isn’t hard to talk about. For example, I had a scary car accident many years ago, in which my car was nearly totaled. I can still remember it clearly, and I know how frightened I was at the time. But I can narrate the story as calmly as if I was telling you about the latest episode of my favorite TV show. I *know* it was terrifying when it happened, but I don’t *feel* terrified when I’m talking or thinking about it. I think about it sometimes when I am on the part of the freeway where it occurred, but I don’t feel the need to avoid that area. In fact, I can laugh about the mess my restaurant leftovers made when they splattered all over the dash, having been launched from the passenger seat at impact. This thing that happened to me is now an integrated, digested event, and it’s no longer traumatic for me.

Does EMDR Work Fast?

In some cases, EMDR may help you heal and integrate faster than traditional talk therapy. However, it is not a magic wand and it still does take time. Before doing the actual reprocessing, several things need to happen. First of all, you and your therapist need to build trust, and the therapist needs to get to know you and assess your unique situation. Then you’ll learn some tools to feel safe and grounded, as well as discuss what traumatic memories to target first. The actual reprocessing time varies as well.

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EMDR is one of the approaches that I can offer as a therapist who serves the queer community, and those with religious trauma or experiences of religious harm. Get in touch if you’d like to learn more about how I may be able to help.