Brains are amazing things, you know? They can grow, help us learn, and actually create new, never-before-seen, heard, tasted, or felt creations! They also hold our personality and our beliefs about ourselves, in relation to other people and the world. What am I? Am I good or bad? What am I good at? Am I worthwhile or worthless? I call the answers to these questions our self-concept.
Additionally, our brain holds our knowledge of pleasure and pain, satisfaction and dissatisfaction, attraction and repulsion, and of course, the never-ending battle between the Force and the Dark Side. (Star Wars reference. I couldn’t help myself.) So our brain has many roles of course, but one of the primary things it does is process, catalogue, and store our external and internal experiences. Let’s call it our Information Processing System. Most of the time, in optimal conditions, our brain processes the information going on around us and stores it in memory. We grow, learn, and get older, and as we do, our brain is cranking away. Each experience tied to another, in an ever-growing web of intelligence and memory.
When the System Stalls Out
Sometimes, though, certain experiences cause glitches in the system. Trauma has a way of sticking in our heads. As the theory goes, when we are confronted with tragedy or any other overwhelming scenario, we have a hard time processing the information coming at us. You could say that your information processing system slows down, or even stalls out. The sights, smells, sounds, and emotions get stored maladaptively and may not be fully processed. These “frozen in time” traumas/disturbing experiences can be long-lasting, easily activated, and can cause a great deal of suffering. The really unfortunate thing about this type of memory storage is that it’s possible to trigger and replay them at the slightest provocation. Instantly, you are thrust into your third grade classroom again, or the car, the swimming pool, or bed, and there is little to do but be re-traumatized. It’s easy to see how this happens in a car accident or a rape, but it also applies to all forms of abuse, performance anxiety, fears, phobias, and negative/irrational beliefs.
I frequently hear my clients describe events like, “I just freeze up,” “I can’t think,” “I just remember it all like it was happening again, and again,” or, “I’m just screaming in my head. I can’t move. I can’t say anything.” So during a trauma our information processing system freezes or shuts off completely, causing memories, emotions, and the physical sensations of the moment to be stored in such a way that causes us more distress than normal over a long period of time.
Cutting Edge Treatment
One of the best treatments I have found for these types of traumatic events, bad memories, and changing negative beliefs is EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). EMDR is an evidence-based psychotherapy for PTSD, and positive outcomes have also been documented implementing EMDR with many other conditions. That is because it appears to affect the way these types of memories are stored. The key to EMDR, and what makes it so fundamentally different from other psychotherapies, is bilateral stimulation of the two hemispheres of your brain. What we have learned is that by stimulating both sides of a person’s brain through sensory input, we can help the brain initiate its own healing process. Now, we can do bi-lateral stimulation in a number of ways: tapping back and forth on hands/knees, tracking an object from left to right with your eyes, or listening to sound in alternating left to right ears. In my EMDR therapy, I use a light bar (just a fancy gadget). It’s an easy way to provide a variety of stimulus, in the way that the client prefers (visual, audio, or tactile, or all of the above).
So EMDR is like kick starting the Information Processing System where it left off. It literally allows the brain to heal itself in a controlled and intentional way. The “R” stands for “Reprocessing” because EMDR facilitates the natural physiological reprocessing of these events, similar to what happens during REM sleep.
Sleep is incredibly important to our mental health, particularly Rapid Eye Movement sleep. During this stage of sleep our brains jump into high-gear, sorting, cataloging the events of the day, and storing them in memory. Since this is the period when our brain is most active during our sleep it makes sense that this is also when we dream. Dreams and REM sleep are great, but not when they can’t process really negative events, or worse, chronic negativity and abuse. There are events that we just can’t process on our own. That’s when our dreams can turn into nightmares, and our anxiety/depression spikes during the day. And worst of all, our self-concept can take a hit. That’s because with prolonged exposure to abuse, negativity, and invalidation, we begin to believe that we are worthless, a waste of space, or only valuable when we meet certain criteria. We start to think things like “I have to be perfect” (aka perfectionism) “I’m defective,” “I am weak,” or “I’m powerless.”
Results?
The whole point of using EMDR is to reduce a person’s anxiety, stress, and discomfort around specific memories, situations, or beliefs. That’s a natural byproduct of using bilateral stimulation. It also is to install more positive beliefs about the client’s self-concept. When you work on this stuff, you don't have to work on it again. Once we desensitize a specific event using EMDR, distress does not normally return.
Little Trauma
EMDR is helpful in a variety of situations. Not necessarily just severe trauma. For example, as long as I can remember I felt like a terrible writer. I basically avoided it at all costs. It didn’t matter what it was. If it was a five-paragraph essay, or a full-blown research paper, I found it paralyzing! I always procrastinated and I regularly turned them in late. Well, I got by mostly, I graduated high school barely, and I went to college, and magically made it into graduate school, twice! I improved a little as time went by, but I still relied on last minute binge sessions late at night to provide the vital stimulation necessary to produce a few terrible words. Remember this was all before I knew about my ADHD. What a blessing that could have been! Whatever.
When it came time to write my dissertation, the bomb dropped. All of my old stuff came up. I felt incompetent, and I really had a hard time even approaching the writing process. EMDR helped me get over a ton of this and begin writing again. In the end, I wrote 170 pages! There is a lot of great EMDR content and information at www.emdria.org and www.emdrhap.org. If you’re interested, check it out.