Think of a memory that still feels like it affects you today. It doesn’t need to be a major memory or even a highly traumatic event. It might simply be something that happened years ago that you thought you were over, such as a moment of humiliation or a relationship that ended badly. It could also be something that was said to you that you have never quite been able to shake off. But it can also be something larger like the loss of someone you loved, childhood traumas, a car accident, or something that happened to you that was out of your control and unexpected.

Whatever it is, notice what happens in your body when you think about that memory. Does your heart rate increase or do you feel a tightening in your chest? Do you start breathing faster…or maybe slower? Or does it feel hard to breathe? Do you start to shake or feel nauseated? Does the memory feel as if you are actually experiencing it right now?

Most times, our memories fade and our brain remembers them as past events. While they may have been upsetting or distressing at the time they do not hold the same emotional charge as they did at the time. In fact, over time, we can look back at many past distressing memories without any reaction at all. Almost like we are simply looking at a still photo…a snapshot of something that happened, rather than something that is still happening.

However, some memories don’t fade. They keep being lived as is they are happening to you again right now.
And this is what I want to talk about today.

My journey with EMDR

Many clients come to therapy having tried for years overcome past experiences, yet no matter what they do, their brain won’t let them forget. What happened to them continues to shape how they see themselves, how they relate to others, and the decisions they make in their daily lives, often in ways they aren’t fully aware of. They could be going about their day, walking along a path and all of a sudden — a smell, a song, something that they see, or even a tone of voice — and just like that, they are no longer on that path but taken back to their earlier trauma or distressing experience and reliving it. They can be trapped inside a memory that feels every bit as real and present as the moment it first happened.

This is not an uncommon reason people seek therapy and I have spent many years trying to find the best ways to help distance from the memories and the impact they have on their lives. But for a long time, I found limits to what traditional therapeutic approaches could deliver. Clients who worked hard to practice the skills taught in sessions could still not fully unhook from what had happened to them. Despite both our efforts, we were not seeing the kind of change that would make a meaningful and lasting difference in their lives. So it sent me looking for a more effective approach to working with people who were struggling to move forward and leave the past where it belonged.

I commenced EMDR training and learned another way to approach trauma. In the years I have been practicing EMDR, I have seen stronger results for those struggling to unhook from memories that have held them hostage. I now not only use EMDR in treating trauma, but with clients presenting with a wide range of conditions (e.g., anxiety, depression) where past events are quietly running the present.

What I found has made a real difference for many clients where other approaches had stalled, and for many of the people I work with, it has been genuinely transformative — though like any approach, it is not a solution for everyone.

The brain has a filing system and trauma interferes with it

When something happens to you, the brain works to make sense of it. It connects the event to what you already know about yourself and the world, processes the emotional content, and files it away. Over time, the memory integrates — it becomes part of your story rather than an open wound. Most memories lose their charge. They become something that happened, rather than something that is still happening.

However, with trauma, it can be very different. Trauma can disrupt the brains natural process entirely.

When an experience is overwhelming the brain’s normal processing system gets bypassed. The memory doesn’t get filed in the usual way. Instead, it gets locked in a raw, unprocessed form, along with everything that was present in the original moment: the emotions, the physical sensations, the sounds, even the beliefs that formed in that instant — thoughts like I am not safe, or this is my fault, or I am powerless. It all stays frozen, exactly as it was.

And this is why that person walking along the path that I mentioned earlier, gets stopped in their tracks. Something in the environment activates a dormant memory, and the brain responds as if the original threat is happening right now. Not as a memory but as a present experience. When this happens, the bodies nervous system is activated. Their emotions flood back and they are back in the moment they have been trying to leave behind.

I want to emphasise that this is not weakness or something that you are doing to yourself. This is the brain doing exactly what it was designed to do — protecting you from danger — but doing it based on information it never had the chance to update.

Why one memory is rarely just one memory

Something else worth understanding is that traumatic memories are rarely in isolation. The brain connects experiences to one another based on similarity. Similar emotions, similar physical sensations, similar beliefs about yourself or the world can all link memories together into a network. So when one memory gets triggered, it can activate the network of other memories connected to it amplifying your reaction in the present moment.

This is why a seemingly small or ordinary trigger can sometimes trigger a response that feels far bigger than the situation actually warrants. It is not just that one memory being activated — it can be an entire network of connected experiences firing at once, each one adding its own emotional weight to the response. Over time, as more distressing experiences accumulate, they can start to link together and form a network. And the responses it produces can become increasingly intense and harder to manage.

This is also one of the reasons EMDR can be so effective. Rather than working through each difficult experience one by one in isolation, EMDR targets the memory network directly. Processing one memory often has a ripple effect across the connected ones, which is why clients sometimes notice shifts in experiences or reactions they weren’t even directly working on.

So what is EMDR, exactly?

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. I know — the name doesn’t make it sound particularly approachable. So let me set the name aside and just tell you what actually happens.

EMDR was developed in the late 1980s by American psychologist Francine Shapiro. She noticed hat her own distressing thoughts seemed to reduce in intensity when her eyes moved rapidly from side to side. She developed that observation into a structured therapeutic protocol,
published her first study in 1989, and the decades of research that followed have established EMDR as one of the most rigorously studied psychotherapies in existence. Today it is recommended as a first-line treatment for PTSD by the World Health Organisation, the American Psychological Association, and numerous other international health bodies.

In a session, you hold a specific memory in mind — not replaying it in exhaustive detail, just holding it — while engaging in a form of bilateral stimulation. What is bilateral stimulation? This means stimulating both sides of the brain in an alternating, rhythmic way. In my practice I use a light bar, which produces a moving light that you follow from side to side with your eyes, handheld buzzies that alternate a gentle vibration between your left and right hand, and earphones that deliver alternating tones between each ear. Some clinicians also guide eye movements using their fingers rather than a light bar. In addition to the methods I mentioned above, I also incorporate body movement and tapping at times during processing. This is done deliberately — adding more to what the brain has to attend to simultaneously increases the load on your brain, which research suggests can further reduce the vividness and emotional intensity of the memory being processed.

Different clients respond better to different methods, and part of the early work is finding what feels most comfortable for you. Sets of stimulation are followed by brief pauses where your therapist checks in with you. You notice whatever comes up — thoughts, images, feelings, body sensations — without needing to analyse or explain it. Then another set begins.

That is it. That is what happens. It sounds too easy really and when most people hear this for the first time, their reaction is some version it sounds strange or too simple to be effective. Which is exactly why research matters so much — and that is what I will cover in my next blog post.

Why we don’t need to replay the memory in detail in EMDR

One of the most common concerns people have when they consider trauma therapy is the fear that they will need to talk through everything that happened to them in detail. In traditional talk based therapies, exploring and talking about the content of difficult experiences is often a central part of the process. For many people, that prospect alone is enough to put them off seeking help altogether — and that is completely understandable.

EMDR works differently, and the reason comes back to what we covered earlier about how traumatic memories are stored. Because trauma gets locked in the brain in a raw, unprocessed form, the goal of EMDR is not to understand or make meaning of the memory through conversation — it is to help the brain finally do the processing it never got to complete. That happens through the bilateral stimulation, not through talking.

In fact, talking in depth about a traumatic memory can actually interfere with processing. When we narrate and analyse an experience at length, we engage the thinking, language-based parts of the brain — but trauma is not stored there. It is stored in the more primitive, survival-based parts of the brain that don’t respond to logic or language in the same way. Talking about it can sometimes reinforce the distress rather than resolve it.

EMDR bypasses that problem entirely by working directly with the brain’s own processing system, without requiring the experience to be put into words.

What clients say about their experience

I have been practicing EMDR therapy for several years now and while I know what the research says about EMDR, clients have also shared their own experiences with it. They have consistently described that over sessions, the memories we target begin to feel different . Many report they are less vivid, broken up, and much less intense Something that once felt overwhelming to think about starts to feel more manageable. For many, the emotional power that used to come with the memory reduces to the point where they can bring it to mind and talk about it as if talking about an event that happened to someone else.

What I find most meaningful, though, is how they think about themselves after processing. Prior to EMDR, clients hold many negative beliefs about themselves (such as I am not good enough, I am to blame, I am not worthy) that had built up around the experience over time. With EMDR processing, these beliefs begin to shift. Clients tell me they find themselves thinking about who they are with more kindness and more accuracy, in ways that had often felt impossible before. The memory no longer seems to be running the story they tell about themselves.

These are personal accounts rather than simple clinical data and every person’s experience of EMDR is different. But lived experience matters, and what I observed with clients progressing through EMDR reflects what the research tells us is happening in the brain when processing occurs.

Before you go, think about the memory I asked you to recall earlier

Think back to the memory you brought to mind at the start of this article. Notice how it feels now. Has anything shifted, even slightly? Does it feel any less immediate than it did when you first called it to mind?

If it does, that is not coincidence. Simply understanding that your brain has been doing something predictable and physiological — rather than something that means you are broken or stuck forever — can begin to change your relationship to the memory itself.

In my next article I will cover what the research tells us about why EMDR works, what you can expect from the process, and how to know whether it might be the right fit for you.