How Does The Brain Change With EMDR Therapy?
EMDR therapy has become exceedingly popular in recent years, largely due to how effective it is. It’s most common for issues like trauma, but it can also help with anxiety disorders and phobias.
Whether you’ve tried more traditional forms of talk therapy or you’re just interested in taking a different approach to the healing process, EMDR can be a big help.
But, does EMDR actually affect or change your brain? If so, how? Let’s take a closer look at the lasting effects of EMDR, why it’s such an effective form of therapy, and the changes you can expect if you decide to work with an EMDR therapist yourself.
Brain Stimulation
The rapid eye movement that occurs during EMDR stimulates the brain. You think about the traumatic memories or experiences you’ve gone through while moving your eyes back and forth quickly.
That stimulation is necessary to help your brain process memories and truly start healing. The stimulation doesn’t cause extra stress. Rather, the process slows down your amygdala and makes it easier to process the traumatic memory without having to live in fear or distress from it.
What does that mean?
When you experience a traumatic event, your emotions start to take control. That’s the responsibility of the amygdala. The prefrontal cortex is the rational thinking part of your brain. It experiences a reduction in control when your amygdala is overstimulated.
When that happens, it can feel like the trauma you experienced just happened, even if it technically occurred years ago. Those memories get “stuck” in the amygdala. So, they feel just as relevant and scary as ever.
EMDR helps to reduce that overstimulation.
Giving the Prefrontal Cortex More Control
EMDR moves your eyes from side to side for a reason. You do the same thing when you’re dreaming at night.
Studies have shown that during REM sleep (rapid eye movements), memories can move out of the amygdala and the rest of the brain can start to process them.
When you work with an EMDR therapist, they help to slow down your amygdala the same way a state of deep sleep would. It’s just temporary, but it helps your brain waves to become more synchronized, allowing other areas of the brain to help you process memories – including the prefrontal cortex which makes things easier to rationalize.
The Importance of Reprocessing
The second part of EMDR is reprocessing. Once you’re able to get your traumatic memories “unstuck”, you can begin to process them and reprocess them in healthier ways.
What’s interesting about EMDR is that it doesn’t remove the traumatic memories from your mind. It doesn’t try to make you forget or “overcome” what might have happened to you in the past.
Rather, it makes it easier for your brain to process those memories correctly. It essentially hands them over to the prefrontal cortex. So, you can think more rationally about what happened to you, and start to feel like you’re more in control than before. You can use those reprocessing skills every day to understand that whatever you went through is not going to hurt you now.
The effects of EMDR are lasting. It doesn’t necessarily change the way your brain works or any structuring. But, it helps your traumatic memories feel less overwhelming by making sure they don’t get caught in the wrong place.
If you’re interested in learning more about EMDR or Trauma Therapy and how it might benefit you, feel free to contact us. Even though this type of therapy is becoming more popular, it’s still perfectly common to have questions when it comes to what you should expect throughout your sessions. I’m here to help.