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When a person experiences a traumatic event, the emotional and physiological responses to the event join together in memory. Healing takes place when the person is able to successfully integrate the traumatic experience into their system. The emotional and physiological portions of the trauma would no longer impact that person negatively.

Sometimes integration does not naturally take place. This most often occurs when the trauma is simply too big for the brain to understand, or there are multiple traumas experienced without time for natural integration or sufficient sleep (REM sleep is when your body is naturally trying to integrate and process the information from your day’s experiences). When integration does not happen, the brain remains “stuck” in the trauma and remembering a trauma may feel as if it were happening again. This is why triggers such as images, sounds, smells, and locations can make one feel like they are re-experiencing the traumatic event. Such memories can have a lasting negative effect that interferes with the way a person sees the world and how they relate to or interact with other people.

EMDR can help the body separate the memory of the traumatic event from the physiological and emotional response of the memory. While the event is not forgotten, the body can rationally think on it without the negative impacts of the sensory information, sometimes in as little as one or two sessions.

EMDR shows that the mind can, in fact, heal from psychological and emotional trauma, just as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes.