What are Memories?
Most people think memories are the images they may get from past experiences. But those images are only one component of a memory. And some people do not get images of past memories, but it is other components of a memory they recall.
When you have an experience there are a number of things you are experiencing all at once. Sights, sounds, smells, thoughts, tastes, sensations, beliefs and so on. Each of these components is stored in different parts of the brain. So, when you have a memory arise you will often have many of these components arise at the same time.
The sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations are all stored in the unconscious parts of the brain. You can’t use your thinking to change them. The thinking part of your brain is in the prefrontal lobe.
Let’s say you are driving down the road and suddenly a song comes on and you are suddenly flooded with sights, sounds, smells, emotions, thoughts from a particular memory that happened when you were in junior high school/middle school. You suddenly feel like you are 13 or 14 years old. You might feel ashamed or humiliated. But nothing bad is actually happening to you in the moment. You are reliving the memory.
This is why in EMDR therapy we work from the Adaptive Information Processing Model, which essentially say past experiences drive current behavior. If those past experiences are adaptive, you will have a positive or neutral experience. If those past experiences are maladaptive, you will have a maladaptive experience.
I often say to people that if you want to clear a lot of maladaptive experiences out just listen to songs you listened to in your early years. I know if I react to a song from my past, and get a flood of memories that I need to take some time to reprocess those memories, so they no longer inform my current experiences and choices.
The other than conscious parts of your brain can process billions of bits of information per second. Your prefrontal cortex only processes 6 bits of information per second. So, trying to think your way into change really cannot occur unless the other than conscious parts of memories also change.
In EMDR therapy we use rapid lateral eye movements to reprocess old memories that are still driving current thoughts, emotions, sensations, beliefs, etc.
When we use rapid eye movements it prevents us from thinking. Thinking is basically conditioning from the outside world in how you should do things, what is acceptable and what is not. How you view the world that will be different from how others have experienced the world, or how it is the same as some people have experienced the world. All that is fine and good in some situations, like not hurting someone. But it can also be a huge problem if you are attacking yourself based on external conditioning that is detrimental to you and or society.
When we reprocess maladaptive memories in EMDR therapy, we bring up different components of the memory (sights, negative self-belief, emotions, physical sensations) to activate it and then start the reprocessing.
When a memory is reprocessed the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, self-beliefs that were painful become neutral. People often report the memory is neutral, has no charge, even in the past and no longer relevant. I am always amazed at how someone starts with a particularly horrific memory causing so much suffering, and ends up saying the memory is irrelevant, is over and in the past once it is reprocessed.
There is no thinking involved in this process so the brain can actually neutralize the other components of memories.
Now the brain already knows how to do this. Notice that there are some memories you have that when you think of them, they are just old memories. They may seem faded and really do not bring up a lot of components. That is a memory your brain reprocessed on its own. Then if you think of other memories that bring up uncomfortable or painful components to the memory, those memories have not yet reprocessed.
