What is EMDR?

When something frightening or overwhelming happens, your brain’s “alarm system” gets activated:

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• Amygdala → acts like a smoke alarm, triggering fear and survival responses.
   

• Hippocampus → normally places experiences in time and context (“this happened in the past”), but during trauma it may not work properly, so the memory feels present and ongoing.
   

• Prefrontal Cortex → the rational “thinking brain” that calms us and makes sense of events. In trauma, it goes offline, leaving the amygdala in charge.
   

The result: the traumatic memory gets stored in a raw, unprocessed form, with emotions, body sensations, and images “frozen in time.”

Why EMDR helps