When the processing system of our brain fails
Humans appear to have an information processing system in the brain that is tasked with processing stressful experiences in a way that does not negatively impact mental health. When stressful or unpleasant experiences happen to a person, he or she usually deals with them intensively, often talking about them or dreaming about them. This continues until the experience is no longer unsettling and thus a state of adjustment has occurred. Together with adequate feelings, these experiences are stored in the brain so that this information can be retrieved at a later time. The inappropriate sensations that arose during the event, the false beliefs about ourselves, and the associated physical emotions are dropped and sorted out in this form of processing.
However, the processing system may fail this service in particularly traumatic and stressful situations. Everything that the affected person felt, smelled, heard or saw at such a terrible moment is usually filed away in his memory in a disorganized way. Unprocessed in this way, these perceptions are stored – presumably with the help of somatic markers – and can be reactivated at a later time by a minor trigger. Even years after the traumatic experience, this can make the person feel as if they were there at that moment. Such re-experiencing, which is clearly different from mere remembering, can be extremely agonizing.
Emotional body markers are to be erased and what has been experienced is to be re-integrated
Within the framework of an EMDR intervention, the aim is to reverse this storage in the body memory, which took place by means of emotional body markers (somatic markers), directly in the brain and thus enable the processing of traumatic experiences, combined with their healthy integration into our memory system. At the same time, the information processing system is activated and stimulated for this purpose.
In most cases, stimulation of this system in the EMDR process is done with rapid eye movements. The background to this is the observation that our sleep usually includes at least once or twice a sleep level characterized by rapid eye movements, which is how it got its name – so-called REM sleep. According to previous scientific findings, this REM sleep seems to be particularly important for processing emotionally and mentally upsetting material.
According to previous experience, numerous sequelae of traumatic events can be indications for treatment with EMDR. This applies equally to individual traumas in adulthood, suffered in accidents or as victims of violence. However, EMDR can also often bring about improvement in the emotional experience of complex trauma disorders, such as trauma resulting from childhood abuse or war veterans.
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EMDR process in 8 phases
EMDR is the abbreviation for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and was discovered accidentally in 1987 by the US psychologist Francine Shapiro. Since then, the method has been used successfully
EMDR process in 8 phases
EMDR is the abbreviation for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing and was discovered accidentally in 1987 by the US psychologist Francine Shapiro. Since then, the method has been used successfully
