Can EMDR be “undone”? - addressing the fear of brain rewiring

It is normal and self protective to feel distrustful of the unknown. When first learning about EMDR, it can seem like something counter-intuitive or even alien.

Some questions I’ve come across include:

• Does EMDR rewire the brain? 

• Will it change the way I think?

• Can it be undone?

  
  

EMDR uses the brain’s natural healing process to update our mental map about ourselves and the world.

You could imagine our brains are a bit like a computer operating system, and trauma memories are a line of buggy code that brings up error messages (triggers / flashbacks) every time they are accessed.

EMDR doesn’t delete the code, but instead changes the file format. It takes the stuck trauma

memories, cleans them up, and refiles them in the functioning working code that we already have (our wider neural network).

The trauma memory was disrupting or even crashing the system when it was accessed, and EMDR helps turn it into a ‘read only’ file. In other words, after successful reprocessing, the trauma memory should be able to be accessed like a normal memory.

When filed appropriately, or reprocessed, the heat should be taken out of the memory. It might feel harder to access with the same level of vivid physiological arousal and acuity as before. It might feel more distant, in that it is filed in a more chronologically or developmentally appropriate order with your other memories, rather than feeling like it just happened, or is still happening now.

So does EMDR rewire the brain? Not exactly, it helps a stuck memory link to the wiring that is already there. 

Will EMDR change the way I think? - quite possibly.

A consequence of healing trauma can be a building and strengthening of adaptive, positive beliefs about oneself and the world.

Can it be undone?

In short, no. Once your brain has healed, it effectively knows and understands the adaptive messaging of integrating the trauma. For example; I am okay just as I am; it wasn’t my fault; I am safe now. 

There might be a deeper layer of this unhelpful messaging, and similar feelings might be triggered again if new traumas occur, but they shouldn’t cause the work that has already been done to unravel.

EMDR doesn’t change your personality or who you are as a person. It can help you to learn adaptive lessons from the experiences you have had, and to move forward from them.

EMDR does not promote a loss of self, but rather an integration of self.