Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR)
EMDR was developed as a treatment for the intense and debilitating symptoms that result from a traumatic experience, as well as the symptoms that are a result of chronic abuse which are similarly traumatizing to an individual. Flashbacks, panic attacks, nightmares are all examples of the symptoms that continue to plague one long after the original event or abuse has happened. EMDR offers individuals extraordinary treatment and healing from PTSD, whether it is a single event that has traumatized an individual or is a result of long term, chronic abuse. The treatment is gentle, non-invasive, and takes great pains not to expose the client to the past traumatic experiences. It is efficient and time saving. It is evidence based and is the chosen modality of the VA and is recognized by most insurance companies for trauma treatment and PTSD. It is not a replacement for traditional psychotherapy, but an extraordinary compliment to it.
The Impact of Trauma on the Brain’s Natural Ability to Process Memories and Heal Itself
Normally experiences become memories through a lengthy process of integration and reinterpretation, a process that automatically happens in the mid/brain without any input from the conscious self. When the process is complete, an experience is integrated with other life events. Those which an individual will need are saved and those which are not are naturally pruned from memory. However, when a single traumatic event or ongoing traumatic abuse occurs, this process gets hijacked and fails. Instead the memory remains “live” and the victim continues to feel the pain and terror as if it is happening in the present with all its accompanying distress and fear. The intense distress is often triggered by random sounds, smells, touch, or images we see. The victim is left to cope with that ever-present fear and terror in the form of the aforementioned nightmares, flashbacks and panic which may cause individuals to engage in maladaptive coping behaviors, such as drinking and drugs and other behaviors that help them to escape their tortured existence.
The brain has the ability to protect and heal itself much the same way our bodies are designed to heal after a physical wound. Initially when one is subjected to trauma our mind does its best to respond. The first defense message we get to protect ourselves is to fight or flee. However, when one survives a traumatic event sometimes one is unable to return to a feeling of security and safety. Even when one is a subjected to a terrible random incident, which will probably never ever occur again, one is still unable to FEEL as if it is over, and because of the terrifying ongoing symptoms individuals do what they can to feel safe and protect themselves. As a result, they are constantly anxious, hyper-vigilant, and/or avoid seemingly innocuous situations. and again, may cope in self destructive ways to escape.
Physiologically what happens at the time of the trauma is our senses send messages of present danger, stimulating the chemicals Cortisol and Adrenalin, which trigger life-saving fight and flee reactions. However, this lightening- speed process simultaneously shuts down (blocks) the part of our brain responsible for reasoning and rational thinking. This system is amazing in its design. For in the moment of intense danger our safety depends, not on analyzing the situation but on saving oneself from it. We know the “thinking” part of our brain is also responsible for processing our experiences and making sense of them. The brain puts experiences into a contextual understanding of the event, but because it’s off line, it is unable to process and integrate these experiences in a natural, healthy, and functioning way. As a result, a random terrible experience is not processed as such. Instead it remains live, never allowing one to feel any sense of real safety because the body and mind have not been able to distinguish safe situations from the dangerous ones of the past. For example, a young girl who is a is victim of childhood abuse will not only fear that person, but may live in fear of all men, and when triggered will experience imminent danger and real terror. This is why sounds, sights, smells and touch, triggered by internalized memories, continue to produce the same terror and the same fight, flee, or freeze responses even when one is not in mortal danger.
Why do some people survive and integrate traumatic experiences and some do not?
Not everyone who goes to war, witnesses or experiences a traumatic event, or is a victim of abuse or neglect experiences PTSD or lingering feelings of the traumatic event. The belief is that trauma integration is not only affected by what happened, but what happened after the trauma and how one makes sense of the event. For example: If a child is lost for a short while, but then found and a loving reunion happens, the child integrates that experience as a singular event, and because it was responded to in a loving and supportive way, the child’s feelings of safety, predictability, agency, control, and hope remain intact and the resulting impression is that there is love and support when something bad happens. And yes, bad things happen, but “I am now safe,” and that that was then and this is now and the world is generally a safe place.
The Results of Non-Integrated Experiences
If one does not get the opportunity to process a traumatic event in a healthy manner when one is a victim of ongoing abuse that’s unrelenting and chronic, or one is trapped in an abusive situation - the mind and body has nothing but its own internal system to protect itself. All the body and mind can do is to be on high alert all the time. Thus, it is understandable that these victims are hyper vigilant, avoidant, and may engage in behavior that helps them escape the constant terror which may be maladaptive, using and abusing alcohol and drugs or being dangerously sexually promiscuous.
The mind can also disassociate to protect oneself when there is no other escape. This means when one is trapped, and has no choice but to be continually victimized, the only life-saving mechanism there is for an individual is for the conscious brain to separate itself from what is happening to them. It is not uncommon for one to report feeling as if they have left their body during abuse, watching, but not feeling what is happening to them. As mentioned above, during these experiences the cognitive, (the thinking and processing part of the brain) is disconnected, and the body is left to respond to the danger, and does what it can to feel safer. It is also common for the mind to block out traumatic events, which is why abuse may hide or blocked from conscious memory. Because the memory is stored in the senses, a person may find themselves responding to a sensory stimulus with fear and panic they don’t understand because they cannot relate the present situation to any past memory. Furthermore, the rational part of the brain’s learning has been compromised and it is unable to distinguish a safe place or person from an unsafe place or person. When the thinking part of the brain comes back on line one may adopt a negative, maladaptive, and inaccurate meaning about the event. Again, in the case of childhood abuse, instead of realizing one was a helpless victim who holds no responsibility for what has happened to them, one may believe they are in part responsible or did something to deserve the abuse. They may experience life as a proverbial war zone and feel ever present danger. To illustrate this point, I had a client who was a survivor of childhood incest, was also a victim of rape and assault, and whose parents continued to verbally abuse her, her entire life. Despite working in their family business, excelling in school, putting herself through college and law school with honors, she lived every minute in state of impending terror. Though she tried as she could to escape her pain productively, the debilitating panic was inescapable. Ultimately, she discovered alcohol, and for a little while she could escape the demons. She drank till she blacked out, often getting in her car and driving till she passed out, ending up in hospitals, often in places far away. Once she drove from Connecticut to Indiana, a place she had no reference to. While this seems utterly insane to the average observer, when looking at her through the lens of coping with the pain of her trauma and terror, which she lived with in real time every day, this makes complete sense. What else could she do to flee the war zone which was her daily internal existence. She sensed and felt danger from almost anyone she met. If one’s family is not a safe place who and where does one go?
How Does Healing Occur:
These disturbing events are stored in the brain in an isolated memory network and because the processing area of the brain was shut down at the time of the trauma, learning and healing are prevented from taking place. As a result, the oldest memories keep getting triggered over and over again and the individual is left suffering endlessly.
BUT, in another part of your brain, in a separate network, is most of the information you need to resolve it. The two are prevented from linking up and the brain cannot embark on its own healing process. EMDR processing allows for the two networks to link up, and the appropriate thinking and processing takes place allowing for the brain to accurately make sense of the past, Finally the client has an opportunity to live in the present, experiencing life in real time not through the experiential lens of the painful past.
The Experience
A clinician uses bilateral stimulation, replicating what happens during the REM (rapid eye movement) stage of sleep. The REM phase appears to be involved in the processing of unconscious material, and is where the brain prunes, processes and integrates our experiences into a healthy data bank, so that we can draw on our experiences to inform us about how to handle life. He/she asks the client to watch their fingers move side to side, listen to a sound which pings one ear then another, or perhaps taps on their knees back and forth as they bring up a pre-determined image that represents a past traumatic event. The dual stimulation triggers the reprocessing mechanism of the brain to resolve and integrate that unprocessed memory that is triggering and causes distress.
The important thing to remember is that your own brain will be doing the healing and you are the one in control