Brian Nandy Counseling              

n a general definition, a trauma is an experience that causes one to develop erroneous beliefs about oneself or the world and to behave in ways that are not healthy. For example, a child who is abused may come to believe she is bad and the world isn’t safe. She may have difficulty in intimate relationships. These experiences also become fixed in the body-mind in the form of irrational emotions, blocked energy, and physical symptoms.

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy that was developed to resolve symptoms resulting from disturbing and unresolved life experiences. It uses a structured approach to address past, present, and future aspects of disturbing memories. The approach was developed by Francine Shapiro to resolve the development of trauma-related disorders as resulting from exposure to a traumatic or distressing events. Similar to rapid eye movement [REM] or dreams, EMDR helps to process blocked information. Dreams function to cleanse the body and mind’s residue of day experiences. The problem is that during disturbing dreams the eye movements are often disrupted and one wakes up, thus not allowing the REM sleep to complete its job.

Francine Shapiro describes two types of traumas:

When a person experiences trauma, it is locked in a memory network – the images, physical sensations, tastes and smells, sounds, and beliefs are frozen in time in the body and mind. Jus t as a body cannot heal itself if there is debris in it, the brain often cannot process a traumatic memory. In order for a wound to heal, we must clean it so the body can do its job. 

Psychological memory [Klein, J, 1988. Who am I?] is memory that feels alive in the present. It forms the basis of our personal identity: we believe we are our history. The body and mind holds on to these memories and cannot live fully in the present. Traumatic memory is stored differently than ordinary memory. Traumatic memory is stored in the right hemisphere in fragmented form, separate from the brain’s language center – which explains why traditional talk therapy is often limited to effectively resolve early trauma.

EMDR also helps facilitate Objective Forgiveness. It is not a sentimental kind of forgiveness. It is an unemotional comprehension of why someone harmed the client.  Where the client understands that the past is indeed the past.  It is acceptance, not resignation. EMDR can help with self-hate, guilt and condemnation which  prevents emotional healing. Example of clients who suffer from lifelong regret and self-blame: the veteran who killed, the mother who was unable to protect the child from an abusive husband, the police officer who could not protect his own family, a rape victim who got into the car of a rapist against her better judgment, or the adult who as a child sexually abused a younger sibling.

Text attained from Laurel Parnell