EMDR is having quite a moment.
Most people who’ve done any exploration of the therapy world have heard of it — and many arrive at my office already asking for it by name. Which I love!!
But what is EMDR? How does it work? And how do you know if it’s the right tool for your healing?
Over the next several newsletters, I’m going to unpack EMDR — why it’s become one of my favorite tools in the 16 years since I first learned it, and why I believe it offers something rare: an insight-rich path to fast-tracking personal growth and getting your nervous system back.
Your Brain Is an Investigator
EMDR theory is rooted in something called the AIP model — Adaptive Information Processing. Here’s the short version:
When something overwhelming happens — big-T Trauma or the quieter, sneakier little-t kind — the brain doesn’t store that memory the way it stores everything else.
It stores it like a crime scene.
Your brain, in its wisdom, decides: I never want to be caught off guard by something like that again. So it documents everything. The sights. The sounds. The song that was playing. Whether it was cloudy. Colors. Your body’s physical sensations. The emotion in that moment. The negative belief about yourself that crystallized under pressure — I’m not safe. I’m not enough. I can’t trust people.
It bundles all of that together, charges it with emotional intensity, and files it in what I call fast-access storage.
Why? Because if that situation were truly life-or-death, a fraction of a second of early warning and energy to survive could save you.
That’s not dysfunction. That’s brilliant.
The Rabbit Problem
Here’s where it gets interesting.
Say a car nearly hit you — white car, cloudy day, a particular song playing in your earbuds. Your brain’s investigator files all of it as suspect. White. Cloudy. That song.
Twenty years later, a white rabbit startles you on an overcast afternoon.
Suddenly you’re in a full-blown panic over a bunny.
From the outside, it looks ridiculous. From the inside, it feels completely out of control, aas though you’ve been hijacked. And because it’s so disorienting, it’s hard to appreciate what’s actually happening: your brain is doing its job with remarkable precision.
(If that was the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog — “Holy Grail” fans, you know — you’d have that situation handled.)
What Gets Left Out
The AIP model calls these frozen, unprocessed snapshots pathogenic memories — and the key problem isn’t what got stored: according to AIP, it’s what got left out.
When the brain files a traumatic memory in fast-access storage, it seals it off from the rest of your learning. The adaptive information — it was scary, but I survived. It wasn’t my fault. I’m actually okay — never gets attached to the memory. It stays locked out.
So the memory never updates. It stays unchanged, charged, raw and ready to fire.
Meanwhile, your nervous system keeps treating a decades-old moment like it’s still happening right now.
A Gentle Question to Sit With
Before the next newsletter, I want to leave you with something to notice — not to analyze, just to observe.
Is there a feeling that seems to arrive with more intensity than the situation warrants?
(My phrase for this: “Are the emotions disproportionate to what’s actually happening?)
Do you experience a response that surprises even you — a flash of anger, a wave of shame, a sudden urge to flee a perfectly safe room? Bunny panic?
Do you find yourself thinking: Why am I like this? This makes no sense.
That might be your investigator brain, still standing guard at a sealed off scene from long ago — still protecting you from something that no longer requires protection.
You don’t have to fix it today. Just notice it.
That brain isn’t broken! Your brain is loyal to you, and, once updated, can become one of your greatest sources of steadiness and strength.
We’ll talk about how to work with that in the next newsletter.
Love, Renee