Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, is a type of therapy that helps you heal from the long-lasting emotional and psychological effects of trauma. When you suffer intense trauma or emotional distress, your brain doesn’t always process the information properly.
As a result, the brain can’t heal, you can’t get over the trauma, and you keep having symptoms, such as anxiety, flashbacks, and anger, or other behavioral reactions.
EMDR is carefully structured to help you reconnect with the memories, emotions, and sensations associated with the trauma. As you think about one specific aspect of your trauma, your therapist simultaneously introduces sounds, taps, and visual cues that you follow with your eyes, moving your eyes from side to side.
Moving your eyes diverts your brain’s focus and reduces your stress while remembering a small piece of the trauma. That allows your brain to reprocess the experience, changing the way the memory is stored and desensitizing the psychological stress you once experienced. The traumatic memories remain, but you no longer have such intense emotional or behavioral reactions.
