I wanted to write a bit about EMDR, how I understand it, and how the process of doing EMDR work tends to work with me. A lot of therapists use EMDR, and some even include an attachment framework when they are working with EMDR, however, the way I approach EMDR work is unique. And I've developed it, because many clients I found responded positively to traditional EMDR, to a point. But there wasn't the flexibility they needed, to really get where they wanted to go. But before we get to that lets talk a bit about why EMDR is needed, and the difference between top-down processing vs. bottom-up processing.
Top-Down Processing:
Top-down trauma processing is like the “thinking” part of trauma work—it’s where we use our logical, conscious minds to understand, label, and articulate what happened to us. This approach is often a powerful first step. Imagine it as assembling a puzzle where, piece by piece, we start to recognize the shape of our experiences and begin making sense of them. Talking about trauma, creating a narrative around it, and seeing our story from a safe distance allows us to make meaning out of the chaos and even feel a sense of control over it. Top-down processing gives us a map, a mental framework to understand why we might react a certain way or why certain triggers affect us. It’s foundational for feeling less alone in our experience and taking back some of the power trauma has held over us.
But it is also the first step. Sometimes, people will get done with this form of processing and think, "Oh, this just is the way life is, this is the way my emotions should feel." Unfortunately, this is only one small part of the puzzle that they are missing, and as time goes on, this message inside of them gets louder and louder.
Completing the Puzzle: Bottom-Up Processing
This was actually the space I found myself in five years ago, I had done a Master's in counseling, I had gotten so much therapy in my life, and I knew most of my trauma history. But something still felt off, I couldn't attract the relationships I wanted, and my body would still have intense reactions when I was in certain situations. I'd go to therapy, and know what my therapist would say, even before they said it, and I just felt stuck and a bit lost.
Then I found EMDR. EMDR, to me, is a bit like scuba diving. It allows us to dive deep into ourselves, our lives, our relationships, and our history. It's designed to help people reach hidden layers of the brain and attachment systems that are often buried beneath years of thoughts, memories, and emotions, even though they might be felt or even just sensed in everyday life.
Picture it: our minds are like vast oceans, full of currents and hidden pathways. EMDR dives below the surface noise, bypassing our usual defenses, and gently invites us into a trance-like state where we’re able to explore and process memories that may otherwise feel too painful or murky to navigate. Through stimulation EMDR works like a sonar, mapping out uncharted emotional waters so that people can safely bring these experiences to the surface and finally lay them to rest.
And EMDR is a process that builds on itself. Your first experience in it, is not the same as three or even five years in. I'll take myself, the first experience I did with EMDR, I was working with a situation where I felt extremely jealous. I focused on the thoughts and images that made me jealous and was able to find an experience earlier in my life that had taught me to think that way. I could feel my body become more relaxed, and the situation bothered me less in the future, but I still needed to do additional sessions before I was able to see it shift.
Contrast that experience to one that I had earlier this year, where a situation happened where I felt deeply alone. By doing EMDR, I was able to dive deep into myself, and felt a belief system of "I am broken". Now I'm pretty successful in my life--I have a job I love, community, friends, etc--but this belief system was still alive somewhere deep inside of me. As I worked with it, I was able to move this trauma energy through my body, feeling it leave, and was also able to hold not only experiences that had taught me it, but how this belief system is something inner generational in my family. And I did this, not from a cognitive position, but a position that knew how to trust my body and the process and was able to let it go.
I tell these stories because I believe it shows how deeply EMDR can heal, and change us. In my next post, I'm going to go deeper into this and talk a bit about how EMDR shifts and expands our awareness of things.
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