EMDR is a trauma processing technique; it helps your brain understand that while a traumatic event was upsetting at the time it occurred, your nervous system does not need to ramp up to fight, flight, or freeze every time you remember it.
Memories associated with traumatic experiences may remain unprocessed because our brains shut off logic and understanding in order to respond and survive during a threatening event. When this happens, the memories then get stored in fragments of pictures, emotions, negative beliefs, and physical sensations. Then, with the memories stored in this way, whenever something is familiar to the traumatic event (a trigger), our nervous system perceives danger and activates a fight, flight, or freeze response, causing us to feel fear, anxiety, or agitation even though there is no actual danger present, only remembered danger.
EMDR helps us reprocess these fragmented memories, connecting them to the higher functioning parts of our brain, so that those parts of the brain can recognize that they are memories, not current threats. The memories become more coherent and less disruptive after being reprocessed.
