EMDR is an evidence-based psychotherapy that facilitates the brain’s natural capacity to process traumatic memories, using Bilateral Stimulation that activate both brain hemispheres during memory processing, and allows the nervous system to “digest” traumatic material at a manageable pace. EMDR is effective for treating trauma because it works with the implicit (body-based/somatic and emotional) memory systems where trauma is often encoded.
EMDR is based on the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) Model, which posits that traumatic memories become “stuck” in their original form – unprocessed, fragmented, and disconnected from current safety. EMDR can help facilitate reprocessing so traumatic material becomes integrated into adaptive memory networks, hopefully resulting in a “here and now” felt sense of safety.
The goal of EMDR is that the individual can then access their traumatic memories and stay within a “window of tolerance” (for example, remain calm, contained, present and alert when in contact with a memory) without the original distress and dysregulation into hyperarousal (for example, anxious, panicked, angry, rage symptoms) or hypoarousal (for example, spacey, detached, numbed off, dissociated) states.