How Trauma Gets Stored in the Brain—and How EMDR Helps Process It
How Trauma Gets Stored in the Brain—and How EMDR Helps Process It
When we experience something traumatic, it doesn't just affect us emotionally—it changes the way our brain processes and stores memories. For many people, these memories can feel "stuck," leading to ongoing anxiety, fear, or emotional distress.
The good news? EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is designed to help the brain unlock and reprocess these memories, allowing for deep healing. Let's dive into how trauma affects the brain and how EMDR can help.
How Does the Brain Process Trauma?
Under normal circumstances, your brain processes memories through the hippocampus, which organizes events and stores them as part of your personal story. The amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm system, helps you respond to danger and threats.
But when you experience something traumatic, your brain’s normal processing system gets overwhelmed.
During Trauma:
The amygdala goes into "survival mode", triggering the fight, flight, or freeze response.
The hippocampus, which helps put memories in context, shuts down or becomes less effective.
As a result, the traumatic memory becomes "frozen in time", stored in raw, sensory form (images, sounds, body sensations).
This is why trauma memories often feel vivid and overwhelming, as if the event is happening in the present moment—even years later.
Why Do Trauma Memories Get Stuck?
Because the brain wasn't able to fully process the experience, these memories are stored in the implicit memory system, which is driven by emotions and body sensations.
This is why triggers—like a smell, a sound, or a place—can suddenly bring back intense feelings of fear or panic. Your brain isn’t able to distinguish between the past and the present, so it reacts as if the danger is happening right now.
How Does EMDR Help Reprocess Trauma?
EMDR therapy helps the brain "unstick" these traumatic memories and move them to the brain’s explicit memory system, where they can be properly processed and no longer trigger emotional distress.
Here's How It Works:
1️⃣ Target the memory: You recall a specific traumatic event while focusing on the emotions, body sensations, and negative beliefs associated with it.
2️⃣ Bilateral stimulation: Your therapist guides you through eye movements (or taps or sounds) that alternate between the left and right sides of your body.
3️⃣ Reprocessing: The bilateral stimulation helps activate both hemispheres of the brain, allowing the memory to be processed more adaptively.
4️⃣ Positive installation: New, healthier beliefs—like “I am safe now” or “I am strong and capable”—are integrated as the distress fades.
The Science Behind EMDR
Bilateral stimulation is believed to mimic the natural process of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when the brain consolidates and organizes memories. By stimulating this process in a safe, therapeutic setting, EMDR helps the brain move traumatic memories from the emotional, reactive part of the brain (the amygdala) to the rational, thinking part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex).
The result? The memory loses its emotional charge, and you’re able to view it with more clarity and less distress.
The Power of Healing
With EMDR, you’re not erasing the memory—you’re changing how your brain relates to it. What once triggered fear or shame can become a distant memory that no longer holds emotional power over you.
Ready to Experience the Healing Power of EMDR?
If you’re tired of feeling stuck in the past, EMDR can help you move forward with more peace and freedom. I offer a free phone consultation to answer your questions and explore if EMDR is the right fit for you.