A Letter from an EMDR Therapist
“Changing the memories that form the way we see ourselves also changes the way we view others. Therefore, our relationships, job performance, what we are willing to do or are able to resist, all move in a positive direction.”
― Francine Shapiro, Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy
So, what is healing? What is trauma? How do I find the one right true way to recover permanently that exactly matches the vision I already have in my head and preferably requires me to change nothing about my daily life or the way I think? (I will give you 3 guesses on that last one.)
People at large have pretty strong reactions to the word trauma. And healing, actually, because to heal we have to acknowledge there’s a wound. Additionally there are different methods that work for different people. I tend to use Francine Shapiro’s Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) Model to conceptualize and communicate to clients what is going on when they come to me with a variety of issues. One tool I use to help people get unstuck and get closer to the life they want to live is called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
What is EMDR?
EMDR has been around for roughly 30 years and has dozens of studies that highlight its efficacy in treating post traumatic stress disorder (as well as anxiety and depression). The unique method of eye movement was discovered by accident by Francine Shapiro, who then used her training as a therapist to develop a new model of how pain can either be digested and integrated into a person’s narrative or become stuck. The more stuck pain, the more it looks like someone’s personality. People wind up super identified with their pain, not their wins or adaptations or growth.
Tell Me More
Each person is born into a particular set of circumstances, with unique biology and available resources. Resources look like the foundational life sustaining things like food and protection from the elements as well as emotional resources found within the family system and within the larger community.
Emotional resources look like access to laughter and joy, expressions of love, acceptance and liking you (also known as positive regard), clear limits and compassionate support into mature expressions of all feelings including anger and sadness.
Ideally, a caring adult deciphers a pre-verbal child’s physical and emotional needs correctly and meets them consistently. (It should be noted that some people hear this and interpret ‘give a child anything they want’. This is an inaccurate interpretation. Sometimes a child actually needs containment and limits, as these help define and structure the world.)
When we are well-resourced and well-loved, we tend to believe ourselves capable, loved, loving, flexible, trustworthy, appropriately trusting, and good in the core of ourselves. We believe good things about ourselves and about others, but do not delude ourselves into trusting where we should not. The world might not always be predictable, but we can meet challenges and resolve them into a coherent sense of self and other. The way that we relate to self and other, according to the AIP model, grows from both the experiences we have and the meaning we make of them. When we suffer from specific symptoms, they always make sense in the context of our whole story.
What Happens When Our Needs Aren’t Met?
As we grow, we develop predictive models of the world. In other words, our brains learn patterns and start anticipating what will happen next. Like when you swing your foot out over a step and anticipate another step. Most of the time, these models are flexible. When new information comes in, the brain updates the model. If a step is missing, you adjust quickly. Learning happens.
But when a model forms during an overwhelming or highly stressful experience, it can become rigid. Instead of updating with new information, it behaves more like a read-only file—locked in place.
When that happens, we start reacting to the past model, not the present moment. You might feel fear, shame, or urgency in situations that don’t actually call for those reactions. The brain isn’t responding to what’s happening now—it’s responding to a prediction created long ago.
These patterns become even stronger when multiple pain points overlap inside the same model. The more triggers connect to that old experience, the easier it is for the brain to drop back into that state. And the more frequently we drop into them, the more evidence we collect that these “maladaptive memories” (in EMDR language) represent reality.
It can even feel unsafe to increase feeling safe! Our bodies say “Are you nuts? There are so many bears. Everything is bears, it’s always been bears, it will always be bears and your therapist is nice but she doesn’t see the bears!” (This is sometimes true. It is also sometimes true that your therapist sees bears that you have missed because they’re polar bears when you’re only looking for grizzlies or because you refuse to turn your head to the right because that’s where the first bear came from).
So how, then, do we recover? How do we change this embodied prediction, this certainty of bears?
Shapiro found that through identifying and connecting with the….
sensory detail
thought
emotional experience
embodied experience
…opens the network. Adding in here and now information updates it. In EMDR, this new information is added through bilateral stimulation like moving your eyes back and forth, tapping, or a tone played in one ear and then the other. Sometimes during the adding in of new information, we also add in resources that we built after that original painful memory occurred, even ones that we build on purpose during therapy. Projecting the updated network into the future strengthens the new prediction. Other types of therapy have similar concepts. Healing is healing!
There are many ways to get new information, and groups like Stress Reset, the Boundaries Workshop and Intimacy Bootcamp are amazing ways to develop new internal resources! Reach out to us here to learn more about those.
EMDR is a “quick fix” - or is it?
People hear that EMDR is fast, and they are both correct and incorrect. It is certainly fast compared to other forms of therapy, but not fast compared to Amazon. It’s also not a tanning salon, where you say exactly what you want and a disenfranchised technician sets up and turns on equipment. Your journey belongs to you. The whole point of EMDR is that your system knows what it needs and doesn’t need to be fixed, just supported appropriately so it can do what it already knows how to do.
Now let’s say you are low on certain resources like self-compassion or self-acceptance: we need to first build enough of that internally to allow the system to begin to rely on it for resourcing. Your therapist might also see a need for increasing your ability to feel your body or name your feelings. All of these are normal parts of the process that will allow your reprocessing to go more smoothly and be long-lasting. I think of it as eating before a workout- your body won’t do as much if you aren’t appropriately fueled. Same goes for your brain.
Resourcing in EMDR: A Necessary First Step
There is a process called resourcing that requires building enough safety in the here and now, enough ability to observe your own internal experience, and enough ability to shift from high distress to lower or no distress that is essential to good EMDR therapy. Without good resourcing, you run the risk of being re-traumatized.
Part of good therapeutic care is not engaging with work that would be harmful to you. People who have been suffering for years are sometimes frustrated by this. (Understandably!) Enough doesn’t mean perfect. You don’t have to be 100% calm and reasonable all the time here and now. You do need to be safe enough, embodied enough, and aware enough to tolerate the distress that can come with reprocessing and to keep yourself safe between sessions.
Ideally, you’ll also be able to identify examples of times that disconfirm your prediction. These corrective experiences give the maladaptive network new information to build predictions from.
EMDR That Fits YOUR Needs
Explaining all the ways to practice EMDR would take forever. Every training I’ve taken has given me a new way to think about identifying the correct memories to work on, the order to address them in, how resourcing should work, how to use bilateral stimulation, etc. To me this indicates an incredible gift of flexibility and a model that can meet people where they are. Even if the idea of resourcing seems offputting to you, I’d encourage you to talk with an EMDR trained therapist about what your goals are and how you might best achieve them- options abound! One important thing for you, dear reader/potential EMDR client, is to find a good relational fit with a therapist who’s trained in the model if this is something that interests you.
When the Magic Happens
After EMDR treatment, I’ve heard clients describe significant shifts in how they see the world. It seems that these shifts are so foundational that they talk in entirely new ways and with new attitudes, as though these newly stated thoughts and emotions are the only ones they’ve ever held. I can never predict where it’s going to go, but I know it’s going to be right for them. I can’t tell you how it will feel for you, or how long it will take. But I do know that for many people, reprocessing has freed their systems to level up and take in new learnings, including those about their relationships with other people. I wish you well. Go with it, and heal.