It's a mouthful of words I know! But really what it means is the process of stimulating one side of the body/brain and the other in alternating taps, eye movements, or sounds. This activates the brain. Stay with me...
 

Our brains are designed to process and integrate our life experiences. Sensory experiences, physical sensations, emotions and thoughts are synthesized from moment to moment. We quite literally “digest” experiences, learn from them, and hold onto what we need in the form of memories. Think of the movie Inside Out…these are the spherical memory orbs of Riley’s. I like to think of our healthy and adaptive memories as purple grapes. It’s a vast and rich network of connected memories that hold our stories, wisdom, and sense of self. Like bunches of beautiful purple grapes!

Unfortunately, some life experiences do not get fully processed and integrated with the rest. Think of these as green grapes…not fully formed. For example, overwhelming or scary events can activate the fight-flight response within our brain’s amygdala and memories get stored differently – they are held as these not fully integrated grapes. When these green grape memories in the amygdala get triggered by reminders of the past, we can feel, think, and act in ways that feel bad and cause problems in the present. Sound familiar?

 

But here is the good news, EMDR Therapy activates the brain’s natural, adaptive information processing system (purple grapes to the rescue!) so that old experiences and problematic memories can finally be fully processed, synthesized, and stored in a healthy way. Green grapes release from the amygdala and turn into purple grapes and join the healthy/adaptive bunches already existing!

Subsequently (and the best part) is the fight-flight disturbing symptoms, emotions, and behaviors that were related to those past held experiences spontaneously fade away rapidly. I had a client the other day say during reprocessing… “I can literally feel my brain tingling with joy!” Clients naturally find themselves letting go of unhelpful patterns of reactivity and avoidance. Healthy new perspectives emerge and grow stronger. This is EMDR.