What is EMDR?
(Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)
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What is the "Eye Movement" part of EMDR?
It is the process of back-and-forth (bilateral) eye movements which gives momentary opportunity for suppression of active cognition, thus allowing the neural networks that are associated with a negative memory to come to the forefront of consciousness.
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What is the "Desensitization" part of EMDR?
We tend to avoid painful, uncomfortable, and negative feelings, unconsciously thinking that the avoidance means the pain doesn’t exist. The goal of Desensitization is to bring to consciousness what has been avoided and decrease the level of distress of the memory that formed the original emotional learning.
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What is the "Reprocessing" part of EMDR?
As the neural networks associated with the suppressed emotional learning comes to the surface, it is then primed to be integrated into our adaptive and meaning-making system (neocortex). The more adaptive meaning (learning) will reconsolidate with the old learning, creating a new system that is characterized by less distress, triggering, and new perspective on an old wound.