How does EMDR Work 

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a proven approach to treating trauma, utilizing guided eye movements combined with other sensory techniques to help people process difficult experiences. This method is structured around eight specific stages, which support the mind in naturally managing and reframing distressing memories.

EMDR therapy taps into the brain’s adaptive information processing abilities, encouraging the client’s natural capacity for healing and resolution. By reprocessing traumatic memories, EMDR aims to replace unsettling elements with constructive beliefs and adaptive coping strategies..

 

What do Trauma or highly emotionally significant experiences do to the brain? 

Imagine your brain as having two teams: the right side, which is the "feeling team," and the left side, the "thinking team."
 

The right side of your brain is like an artist or a movie director—it’s tuned into emotions, pictures, sounds, and feelings. When something really intense or traumatic happens, the right brain records it almost like a series of vivid snapshots or scenes in a movie. It remembers not just what happened, but how it felt, and it holds onto all the sensory details—like what things looked like, sounded like, or even smelled like. This is why, after something traumatic, people might get sudden flashes or intense feelings that remind them of the event. The right brain is keeping that memory alive, almost like it's on standby to warn us if something similar happens again.
 

On the other hand, the left side of your brain is more like a librarian or a writer. It's good at making sense of things by putting them into words and creating a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But during trauma, the left brain doesn’t work as well because it’s hard to organize or talk about things when you’re scared or overwhelmed. It can kind of “go offline” when you're in survival mode. This means the memory doesn’t get organized in the way that most other memories do—it doesn’t become part of a logical story you can explain easily.

So, trauma memories can feel like they’re stored in the right brain only, full of raw, intense feelings, and they don’t always make sense to us because they haven’t been put into words or processed by the left brain. This is why people often remember trauma more in feelings or flashes, rather than as a clear story, and they might struggle to talk about it because it hasn’t been “filed” in the usual way.
 

Healing from trauma often involves helping the left brain connect with those right-brain memories—finding words, putting things in order, and making sense of them. This helps the memory feel less intense and more like just another chapter in our life story.