Rewiring the Mind + Body: How Somatic EMDR Can Heal Trauma and Transform Your Life by Erin Rupert + Natalie Cooney

What is EMDR?

EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is a technique used in psychotherapy to treat anxiety, depression, panic, and post-traumatic stress. The technique involves finding targets for healing and using bilateral stimulation (BLS) to process. With this technique, your memory networks collect, desensitize, and reprocess the target memories.

The bilateral stimulation (BLS) can be eye movements, tapping, bi-audio headphones, or buzzers.  This tool explores associated memory networks. The pathways in your brain and autonomic nervous system are “rewired”.  The therapeutic work starts to shift target memories and resolve negative core beliefs.

This therapy allows you to drop into a target memory or feeling state while maintaining contact with the present moment. Controlled and tolerable exposure to activating memories or feeling states supports memory re-consolidation. Imagine processing the memory or feeling state and then no longer getting hijacked or triggered.

How can EMDR help me release old patterns of fight, flight, or freeze?

Want to reduce your everyday overwhelm? Feel stuck in the past? Struggling to move past a negative core belief that drives feelings and behaviors?

We travel the trail to the contributing memories when we target triggers.  The trail we follow with the BLS guides us to the root. Tracing these lines of associations can make the non-conscious conscious. Reprocessing and digesting these triggers, combined with BLS, finds the activating memory networks.

Following a target back in time broadens perspective and cultivates integration. Integration of traumatic material is essential for health. Bringing into wholeness that which was isolated or cut off is why EMDR works.

Trauma creates isolation, a cutting off of aspects of life. Trauma isolates memories, parts of self, or even the feeling of being themselves. Trauma resolution is the reclamation of these aspects of self. Trauma resolution processes old states of activation or overwhelm towards completion.

The mind-body connection in EMDR can sometimes be missed. It is a cognition-based model that also engages the brain and Central Nervous System. Incorporating body awareness allows one to complete the fight, flight, or freeze while engaged in the EMDR process. We are at an advantage in helping those pesky underlying nervous system states like Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn.

The threat cycle continues to live on in the mind and body until we are able to reclaim, reprocess, and integrate what turned it on in the first place. 

EMDR can help you access the root of your trigger, and then, effectively process it to completion.

Targeting present, recent past, or past events where fight, flight, freeze, or fawn were utilized, we can bring forward activation. Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn were needed to protect, defend, and survive. This gets stuck when we don't get adequate support. By giving support now while making contact with underlying activation we can resolve trauma. We process these stuck states with bilateral stimulation. We can pair EMDR with parts work, somatic experiencing, and even Ketamine-assisted therapy.

How does EMDR Work?

EMDR uses bilateral stimulation and targeted triggers to find core memory networks. Conscious and non-conscious, this broadens perspective. EMDR works through desensitizing and deactivating stuck threat cycles. EMDR reprocesses core memories, core belief systems, and feeling states.

With your EMDR therapist, you may start by establishing a relationship and resources for getting regulated and calm. This stage of preparation is vital to establishing safety. We work towards creating healthy conditions for the active trauma processing phase.

First, you and your therapist will establish a relationship and gather a history of your symptoms. Then, you'll work on building safety and resources. You'll resource with bilateral stimulation. Then, you'll begin to process targets to help desensitize and reprocess what has gotten stuck. Stuck material, like overwhelming feeling states and negative core beliefs, drives emotion. Stuck material drives the threat response. Drives behaviors and cognitions in your relationships, in your sex life, in your job, and in the way you relate to yourself and others.

You can expect to witness a shift in how you experience past events in the present and may witness a gradual decrease in symptoms.

Like any therapeutic technique, the outcome depends on:

•Your felt sense of safety

•The therapeutic relationship

•Your psychological readiness for change

•Your ability to reflect on your experiences.

We have seen that the relationship with your therapist is the most important component to the success of this treatment.

Will I have to re-live the traumatic material?

One of the most common questions I get with trauma work is whether someone will have to relive what happened to them. This is a normal and valid fear when embarking on “trauma resolution”. The short answer is, no. The long, you will never have to re-live it. Yet, you may need to witness, heal, and process it while in a safe environment, in a mindful and guided way.

In EMDR therapy we “go in” knowing we can safely “come out”. We aim for compassionate and loving witnessing of aspects of yourself, your life. Bringing back into wholeness what has been dis-connected. Especially the parts of your life that didn’t get what you needed most, giving a Re-Do. This “bringing into wholeness” is an essential aspect of trauma resolution. We do a re-do by weaving together bite-sized pieces of: traumatic material, presence, and a compassionate witness.

How to get started with EMDR?

First, you’ll want to find an EMDR therapist who has experience in working with what you want to work on. Some EMDR therapists are “purists”, meaning they use the EMDR protocol as their primary language. We recommend those who have childhood trauma to pursue EMDR providers who are relationally trained.

If you are someone who may feel turned off by someone going through a series of questions and then turning on bilateral stimulation, then we recommend you look for someone who uses a few different modalities and is relationally trained.

Second, after finding a therapist, you’ll need to communicate your desire to process trauma using EMDR. Then you and your therapist can explore if EMDR is right for you and begin to create a plan, gather a history, and targets for processing.

Then, you’ll get your safety established and resources available. This creates the safety in knowing you can witness and come out of the memory and emotional states when you need a break.

Finally, you’ll begin targeting aspects of your life in the past, recent-past, present, or future that cause activation and distress. You and your therapist will explore which bilateral stimulation you prefer. Then, you’ll start processing stuck activation in conscious or non-conscious memory networks. You will be uncoupling the memory from the distress or threat cycle states (memory is state-dependent).

What is the process? 

Though EMDR relies on bilateral stimulation, it can be conducted both in-person and online.

If you prefer to work with a therapist in person, you may have the option of several forms of high-tech bilateral stimulation:

• Eye movements using a light bar

• Buzzers that alternates vibrations as you hold them

• Bi-Audio headphones that alternates tones from ear to ear

Or you may combine a few forms of bilateral stimulation to support stuck reprocessing.

Online EMDR may require a more detailed plan when working with your therapist. Some therapists will rely on low-tech options of EMDR online including butterfly tapping or eye movements without a light bar. A therapist facilitating low-tech eye movements will hold their fingers up and move them back and forth rapidly. A more high-tech form of EMDR online includes the use of third-party websites that facilitate eye movements much like a light bar.

Because the eyes need to move explicitly, it’s discouraged to conduct EMDR over a phone or a small screen like a tablet. If you’re considering online EMDR, ensure that you have a computer for your telehealth sessions.

The process of desensitization and reprocessing requires very little talk throughout the session. Once a target has been established and BLS is active, you will be asked to allow whatever thoughts, feelings, sensations, or memories to show up. I think of this as a boosted meditation practice where you simply notice your experience.

After a minute or two, the therapist will check in to see what came up for you.

You’ll reply, and the therapist will either encourage you to stay with the current train of thought or return to the original picture. This will repeat until there is no felt sense of disturbance.

The process of EMDR is a relatively straightforward protocol. Yet, this doesn’t mean it’s a linear or short process for everyone. The therapist is trained to “follow the brain” and may find that the original target is only the tip of the iceberg. More needs to be uncovered for resolution. With that said, when starting an EMDR process, it’s important to stay curious and practice openness to reap the rewards it has to offer.

Who benefits from EMDR? Am I a good fit for EMDR?

Conditions that EMDR can help:

• Anxiety

• Panic attacks

• Phobias

• Depression

• Trauma

• PTSD

• Emotional flooding

• Negative underlying patterns

• Negative core beliefs

• Flashbacks

• Inner critic and inner child repair

• Anxious attachment, avoidant, or insecure attachment styles

EMDR is both structured and free-flowing. People often appreciate being able to target their symptoms, triggers, and stressors. Getting quickly to what is underneath and connected with the help of bilateral stimulation, makes EMDR a popular modality.

People who are a good fit for EMDR usually need to have some resources and enough social support in place. Trauma healing does not happen in a vacuum. EMDR is better integrated when someone has a connection with loved ones and a community.

EMDR may not be a good fit for those with dissociative disorders, or psychosis. Well-trained EMDR clinicians will assess your resources and readiness for a modality.

Can I do EMDR along with other types of therapies?

Yes! EMDR pairs well with Somatic therapy, Ketamine-Assisted Therapy, and IFS/Parts Work.

How do I start Somatic Therapy in San Diego, CA ?

Compass Healing Project is in California (in-person in San Diego and Online Therapy statewide) and Colorado (in-person Golden and Online Therapy statewide). We offer free discovery calls where we explore whether EMDR is a good fit for you. We have top-of-the-line modalities like Somatic Experiencing, Couples therapy, Ketamine, and Hypnotherapy too.

Fill out our discovery call inquiry form and get matched today!

Your Authors:

Erin Rupert is our Colorado EMDR clinician. Her eagerness to help and provide a safe space for trauma work is matched by her know-how and willingness to learn what is best for you. She specializes in EMDR, trauma resolution, and anxiety. She has current openings for in-person at our Golden, CO location. She has training in Somatics, Hypnotherapy, and Ketamine Assisted Therapy. Read more about her here. 

Natalie Cooney is the owner and founder of Compass Healing Project. She created Compass Healing Project so people can receive healing deeper than just talk therapy. She seeks to provide her community with holistic care for sex therapy, nutritional therapy, somatic therapy, EMDR, psychedelic assisted therapy, attachment healing for couples, relationships, and individuals.

Other Services Offered at Compass Healing Project

At Compass Healing Project, we take a holistic approach to therapy, using a range of modalities to support various mental health needs. In addition to helping reclaim your nervous system with somatic therapy, we offer EMDR, Clinical Sexology, hypnotherapy, ketamine-assisted therapy, and embodiment practices—each tailored to help with anxiety, depression, PTSD, grief, sexuality concerns, and relationship issues. To learn more about our services, visit our blog or connect with our compassionate therapists in Colorado and California, who specialize in trauma resolution, emotional healing, and integrative therapy to support your journey to well-being.