EMDR therapy is a completely different kind of therapy than you may have encountered before. EMDR therapy is a completely different way to conceptualize what is causing distress in someone’s life. It is not like traditional forms of psychotherapy that focus on trying to change cognitions and behaviors, to change things. EMDR therapy does not try to control or manage symptoms. It is a steep learning curve for most therapists. You have to unlearn what you have learned to be proficient at EMDR therapy. There is much to learn from a very different perspective.
Dr Francine Shapiro, the originator of EMDR therapy, discovered that rapid lateral eye movements while recalling a disturbing memory desensitized the memory and reprocessed memories with similar components at the same time.
She realized that we all have an innate capacity to move towards health psychologically. Just like how our body can heal cuts on its own. When something difficult, challenging or overwhelming happens, as we get through it our innate capacity to heal kicks in. We often learn things from the experience that we can apply to future circumstances.
If you have spontaneously reprocessed a memory, when you recall the memory, it will have less and eventually no physical or emotional charge to it. It will not bring up negative thoughts. It may look faded or distant or black and white. People often report that it is just an old memory and not relevant any longer. These are just some ways people describe the difference in a memory after it has been reprocessed.
Sometimes circumstances interfere with our ability to reprocess a memory organically. For instance, the physical or emotional experience was too overwhelming. Or something interfered with our ability to learn from the experience and apply the learning to the future. Or the same thing kept happening over and over, so we never get over it.
When we have an experience that has a component of a previous memory (sights, sound, smells, sensation, location, similar circumstance, etc.) we will react much like we did in the previous experience.
Essentially past experiences inform present circumstances. What Dr. Shapiro called the AIP Model (Adaptive Information Processing Model). We may react as if a past experience is happening again even if the present circumstance is different. This happens with both positive and negative past experiences. Essentially, we see the world based on what we have experienced in our lives. This is why there are so many divergent experiences of the same circumstances.
We tend to project our experience out onto what is happening in the moment and onto other people. Depending on life experience and conditioning, you may see what is happening as positive or negative.
For instance, you are in a car accident. Every time you drive down that same road you get jittery and fear you will be in an accident. Or every time you see a white truck you start to panic. In this situation the location and the color and type of vehicle is a trigger. You will react as if you are in danger even if that vehicle and circumstance on the road currently are not causing a problem.
Or, why war veterans can have flashbacks of a mission gone bad even when they are state side in a safe environment. There would have been a component of the memory in their environment, a sight, sound, smell, taste, circumstance, sensation that was present during the mission that triggered the flashback. It could have been a simple as the sound of a bird or the wind that was the same in both situations.
I had a firefighter once who reported being triggered every time they drove by the location where they got injured and every time their neighbor put out their recycling. Ok, so the location makes sense but why the recycling? There was no recycling going on at the scene. The sound of the class clinking in the recycling bin triggered the memory of the glass breaking on the windshield of the car that hit him.
The brain stores a memory in different parts of the brain based on its components, sights, sounds, smells, sensation, tastes, location, circumstances and so on. The other than conscious parts of the brain can process billions of bits of information per second so it will associate current circumstances with past information lightning fast. It helps us apply learning to present circumstances but if past memories are not reprocessed it can give us unhelpful responses.
I often tell clients that EMDR therapy is like jump starting a battery in your car. When you get to the reprocessing phases of EMDR therapy, and you start reprocessing old memories your organic capacity to reprocess is activated. You continue to reprocess outside of therapy sessions. You essentially get more for your money since you continue to reprocess outside of your therapy sessions.
It can take a while to get to the reprocessing part of EMDR therapy, depending on your history, internal resources, ability to let go and let whatever happens happen, and your ability to change states from upset to calm. More about the EMDR therapy phases below.
When Dr Shapiro originally developed EMDR it was just a technique applied to upsetting memories. Over time there is much we have learned about EMDR and how it can be most effective. Sometimes people became too overwhelmed when reprocessing a memory, so we had to build in a phase to assess a person’s ability to reprocess memories and prepare them if they are not ready. EMDR therapy is now its own form of psychotherapy.
EMDR therapy is a comprehensive therapy all its own. Originally when it was just a technique. Now it has evolved into a full form of Psychotherapy. Some clinicians are still using it as a technique. Integrating it in with other things they do. This is different than from receiving EMDR therapy that comes from the benefit of its comprehensive approach that allows for other modalities to be used in Phase 2 to prepare people for reprocessing. More on the phases in the next article.