What is EMDR?
Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing
Everything & every event in our lives get stored in our brains. During normal events, your brain stores memories smoothly. During disturbing or upsetting events, your brain stores traumic memories in a way that doesn't allow for healthy healing so trauma is like a "wound" that your brain hasn't been allowed to heal which means your brain didn't receive the message that the danger is over.
Newer experiences can link with earlier traumatic experiences and reinforce a negative experience over & over again. Just like your body is sensitive to pain from an injury, your brain has a higher sensitivity to things you saw, heard, smelled or felt during a traumatic event thus "triggering" you and those improperly stored memories. EMDR helps you to access memories or traumatic events combined with eye movements & guided instructions that reprocesses or "repairs" the mental injury from that memory. Remembering what happened to you will no longer feel like reliving it and the related feelings will be much more manageable.
