Our bodies and our minds are built with the innate ability to heal. When our survival responses (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn) resolve and when the communication between major areas of our brains is integrated, stress and trauma can be managed and resolved. However, if those survival responses become stuck and communication is disrupted, we can experience lingering distress and symptoms like hypervigilance, sleep problems, and/or intrusive memories. Even if our brains become stuck, they can resume their normal healing processes with additional help. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy supports our brains ability to reprocess traumatic or stressful memories, thereby encouraging our brains to heal in the following ways.  

First, EMDR Therapy helps strengthen our distress tolerance when recalling traumatic events. EMDR Therapy’s model of brief exposure, accompanied with visual, tonal, or tactile bilateral stimulation, helps to reduce the charge and emotional intensity those memories or experiences carry. As this charge reduces, we may experience less avoidant behaviors or less emotional flooding when navigating triggers or present day stressors. We may feel lighter and more empowered as we navigate the stress of daily life and how they resonate with our previous experiences.

Second, EMDR Therapy helps challenge or reprocess unhelpful narratives we have developed about ourselves as a result of our traumatic experiences. These burdensome narratives may limit how we view ourselves and impact the ways in which we show up in our lives. By reprocessing these narratives, we can relinquish undue responsibility, cultivate compassion towards our choices, and strengthen our sense of self-worth. 

Third, EMDR Therapy helps release excess or stuck activation energy in our bodies. When we experience trauma, our bodies begin readying ourselves towards fight, flight, freeze, or fawn survival responses. If this energy becomes stuck in our bodies, our bodies’ alarm systems may be more sensitive and go into more frequent and intense stress responses. EMDR Therapy allows these original responses to the traumatic event to “complete,” reducing the tension we are holding in our bodies. Our alarm systems then have the ability to reset, decreasing the frequency and intensity of our stress responses. 

Additionally, EMDR Therapy can be a gentler and easier way to process trauma in the therapy context. Given that EMDR Therapy is not narrative or talk therapy based, we do not have to identify or share every detail of the traumatic experience with the therapist to access EMDR Therapy. This can mitigate the impacts of shame caused by the traumatic experience by giving us permission to share what details we feel comfortable and empowered to share. Similarly, EMDR Therapy is gentler given the presence of dual attention awareness. Dual attention awareness allows us to balance being simultaneously in the past and present, decreasing the vulnerability to “spiraling’ down past memories and increasing our grounding in the present moment. 

If you would like more information regarding EMDR Therapy, please visit www.emdria.org. If you are curious if EMDR Therapy is right for you, please reach out to schedule a free phone consultation (e: nicole@throughthepavementtherapy.com or 412-945-7802) and we can discuss how EMDR Therapy can help