Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an evidence-based treatment method proven to help people recover from trauma and PTSD symptoms. It has also been shown to be a helpful treatment for disorders such as anxiety, depression, and other distressing life experiences.

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Our brain has a natural ability to process through information. But during a distressing or traumatic situation, that mechanism can get overloaded and it won’t do a good job of sorting through the information. When that happens, sometimes it will keep bits of that experience that you may not want, like the exact what you felt during the situation, or the exact way your body reacted.

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All of those bits of information will get trapped and built up in your nervous system, and will come up again later. It could come up as flashbacks or intense emotional reactions. So our goal with EMDR is to tap into that natural processing mechanism in your mind to flush out all those trapped bits of information. The end goal will be for that distressing memory to feel more like a neutral memory, and to help you feel more in control of the memory itself and the related emotions.

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The way that we do that with EMDR is with something called ‘bilateral stimulation’, or BLS. This is a stimulation that alternates from one side of the body to the other. You can see an example of the ‘eye movements’ version of BLS in the video linked below. This bilateral stimulation is what will jump-start that processing mechanism in your mind and help us to process through any distressing memories.