Here's how it works: Imagine that you've had an argument with a co-worker. You can feel upset, angry or fearful with all the physical reactions that go along with these different emotions. You can also have negative thoughts about the person and yourself. You might imagine how you'd like to exact revenge, but let's hope you resist those behaviours; among other things they would probably get you fired. So you walk away. You think about it. You talk about it. You go to sleep and maybe dream about it. And the next day you might not feel so bad. You've basically "digested" the experience and now have a better sense of what to do. That's the brain's information processing system taking a disturbing experience and allowing learning to take place. Much of it goes on during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Scientists believe that during this stage of sleep the brain processes wishes, survival information and the learning that took place that day. Basically, whatever is important to us. The bottom line is that the brain is hardwired to do that.
After uninterrupted information processing, the memory of the argument has generally linked up with more useful information already stored in your brain. This can include past experiences you've had with this co-worker and others. You may now be able to say, "Oh, that's just the way John is. I've handled something like this before with him, and it came out fine." As these other memories link up with the current disturbing incident, your experience of the event changes. You learn what is useful from the argument and your brain lets go of what's not. Because the negative feelings and the self-talk are no longer useful, they're gone. But what you needed to learn remains, and now your brain stores the memory of the event in a form where it is able to successfully guide you in the future.
As a result, you have a better sense of what you're supposed to do. You can talk to your co-worker without the intense emotional turmoil you had the day before. That's the brain's adaptive information processing system taking a disturbing experience and allowing learning to take place. It's doing just what it's geared to do.
Sadly, disturbing experiences, whether major traumas or other kinds of upsetting events, can overwhelm the system. When that happens, the intense emotional and physical disturbance caused by the situation prevents the information processing system from making the internal connections needed to take it to a resolution. Instead, the memory of the situation becomes stored in the brain as you experienced it. What you saw and felt, the image, the emotions, the physical sensations and the thoughts become encoded in memory in their original, unprocessed form. So, whenever you see the co-worker you argued with, rather than being able to have a calm chat, the anger or fear comes flooding back. You may try to manage your feelings out of self-preservation, but whenever the person appears, your distress goes up.
When reactions such as these refuse to go away in the present, it's often because they are also linking into unprocessed memories from the past. These unconscious connections occur automatically. For instance, your immediate dislike of a person you just met may come from memories of someone in some way similar who hurt you before. Also, consider the case of a woman who was raped. Years later, she is in bed with someone she knows is a very loving partner. But when he touches her in a certain way, her emotions and body respond automatically. The terror and feelings of powerlessness she had during the rape flood her. If the information processing system did not function properly after the attack, a touch similar to the rapist's can link into the memory network and "trigger" the emotions and the physical sensations that are part of that stored unprocessed memory.
The disrupted information processing system has stored the memory in isolation – un-integrated within the more general memory networks. It can't change since it is unable to link up with anything more useful and adaptive. That's why time doesn't heal all wounds, and you may still feel anger, resentment, pain, sorrow or a number of other emotions about events that took place years ago. They are frozen in time, and the unprocessed memories can become the foundation for emotional, and some times physical, problems. Even though you might not have had a major trauma in your life, research has shown that other kinds of life experiences can cause the same types of problems. And since the memory connections happen automatically, below conscious level, you may have no idea what's really running your show.
How EMDR Therapy Works
“EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy,” writes Dr Shapiro in Getting Past Your Past. “It started because of a discovery I made about eye movements….I noticed that when that kind of thought [negative, charged, nagging thoughts] came to mind, my eyes started moving very rapidly back and forth diagonally. Then the thought shifted from my consciousness. When I brought it back again, it had lost its power.”
Dr Shapiro started doing the eye movement desensitization or EMDR therapy deliberately: she found she was able to change the feelings connected to her thoughts by deliberately using eye movements. She also discovered that other forms of side-to-side movements (eg, taps alternating from hand to hand or tones played from one ear to the other) is also effective in helping people process memories and getting unstuck from the past.
If you feel stuck in the past – or if you keep making the same mistakes over and over – you’re not alone! EMDR therapy might what you need to break free and move on.
Author Bio
Francine Shapiro, PhD, author of Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy, is a senior research fellow at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, director of the EMDR Institute, and founder of the non-profit EMDR-Humanitarian Assistance Programs. As the originator of EMDR, she is a recipient of the International Sigmund Freud Award for Psychotherapy of the City of Vienna, the American Psychological Association Trauma Psychology Division Award for Outstanding Contributions to Practice in Trauma Psychology, and the Distinguished Scientific Achievement in Psychology Award, from the California Psychological Association. As a result of her work, over 70,000 clinicians have treated millions of people during the past 20 years. She is an invited speaker at psychology conferences and universities worldwide.
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