How EMDR Therapy Affects Your Brain
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) can be a powerful tool in healing trauma. Working with a trauma therapist who specializes in EMDR can help you thrive and survive despite the trauma you’ve experienced. It can help to improve or change old perceptions, heal past wounds, and help you see the light at the end of the tunnel.
In order to understand the amazing benefits of EMDR, we must first understand how the brain works during traumatic experiences and how it impacts our daily lives.
What Happens During a Traumatic Event?
Neurobiology is the study of the organization of the cells in the nervous system that process information and mediate behavior. Understanding the neurobiology of trauma can be helpful to people struggling with PTSD or trauma-related issues, like depression and anxiety.
When a threat is perceived, this activates the stress response in the body known as fight, flight, or freeze. The brain releases a hormone which tells your body to release cortisol. At the same time, the amygdala tells your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, which helps you run away or fight during a stressful situation. During threatening situations, the amygdala can help in learning but cortisol shuts down the way the hippocampus functions. So while you would be able to survive a traumatic event, the memory has not been adequately encoded into your brain because the hippocampus shuts down.
This can explain the different trauma responses people have or why individuals with PTSD experience flashback and behavioral reenactments. The brain thinks the event is still happening even if it has long passed.
What is Neuroplasticity?
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially those in response to learning, experience, or following injury. This is essentially how your brain can change in meaningful ways.
Studies have proven that our neural pathways are not unchangeable once we become adults, which has been an age old belief. This means our brains can change in order to put rest to old feelings, learn new ways to respond, and interpret thoughts and feelings differently. We are able to re-write our trauma responses so healing can become more possible.
Neuroplasticity happens best with consistent repetition. As you routinely experience something positive or productive, the neurons solidify the ew pathway and all the new information that comes with it.
How Does EMDR Support Neuroplasticity?
As we mentioned earlier, when a memory is triggered, the traumatized brain re-lives it. To bring relief, EMDR treatment is similarly rooted in your experience without you needing to re-live or retell the traumatic experience.
Since EMDR research acknowledges that the brain heals through repetition, the therapy addresses traumatic memory through a series of repeated sounds, taps, or hand movements. You and your therapist can deal with the trauma pathways in your brain by creating a better experience. This starts with noticing emotions, mental images, or emotions connected to the memories.
As you consistently and repetitiously start to reprocess those memories and sensations, healing starts to occur. With the help of your therapist, you can start creating and strengthening healthier neural pathways through new information. You can reflect on the past without much suffering. When stressful situations occur, you will be able to be aware of your safety in the present, while also focusing on a traumatic event at the same time. Soon enough you will be able to better tolerate stress and the body won’t produce as much cortisol during stressful moments.
Our EMDR therapists can help you create and strengthen your neural pathways, and move past your trauma. At Calm Again Counseling, we offer EMDR therapy in the Bay Area. To learn more about our practice in the Bay Area, call (415) 480-5192.
