During happy moments, like singing “Happy Birthday” on your child’s first birthday or watching them graduate from college, our brains process and neatly store memories. But when we experience something traumatic, our brains can’t store memories properly.

“When we have any type of distress or disturbing event that creates upsetting images, thoughts, and emotions,” Julie Manuel, clinical program manager at Kettering Health Behavioral Medical Center, says, “it creates these overwhelming feelings that potentially can really disrupt how our memories are then stored.”

Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy offers a structured approach to treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and helping the brain restore memories.

What is EMDR therapy? 

EMDR therapy uses bilateral stimulation to reprocess someone’s memory of a traumatic event “to hopefully reduce the charge of that particular emotion or feeling associated with the traumatic memory,” Julie explains. 

Bilateral stimulation activates a person’s whole brain by having them look side to side, tap on alternative shoulders, or listen to sounds in one ear and the other. This type of stimulation makes it easier for the brain to form new neural pathways and store information, similar to what happens to our brains during REM sleep. 

Bilateral stimulation isn’t the only thing that sets EMDR therapy apart from other therapies. 

“What’s really unique about EMDR,” Julie says, “is that you don’t have to talk at length about the actual traumatic experience.” 

Instead, EMDR therapy follows a structured process focused on noticing and changing memories. 

Desensitizing and reprocessing 

EMDR therapy follows an eight-step process: client history, preparation, assessment, desensitization, installation, body scan, closure, and reevaluation. 

Of the eight steps, desensitization, installation, and body scan make up the reprocessing phase. This is when bilateral stimulation is used. 

“During the reprocessing,” Julie says, “I’m not talking, they’re not talking. They’re just following my finger, listening to chimes, or self-tapping.” 

In the desensitization step, the patient focuses on the traumatic event while using bilateral stimulation to reduce their subjective unit of distress (SUD) toward the memory. 

Then, for the installation step, the patient uses bilateral stimulation while thinking alternative thoughts about the event (“I’m safe” rather than “I’m in danger,” or “I did the best I could” rather than “I failed”) to change their emotional response to it. Afterward, the patient does a body scan—focusing on each part of their body and noticing any tension—to determine how the memory makes them feel and repeats the reprocessing phase as necessary. 

Julie explains that EMDR therapy can take as few as one or two sessions to help, and after a few months, people’s emotional responses to their traumatic memories are entirely different. 

“It gets people back into a functioning state so they can go back to participating in their life.”

If you’re working through trauma, there is hope. Call (937) 534-4600 and select option three (3) to speak with someone about Kettering Health’s Intensive Outpatient Program and EMDR therapy.