Dr. Susanne Altmeyer, Chief Physician at the Clinic for Psychosomatic Medicine, Psychotraumatology, and EMDR and the Day Clinic at Gezeiten Haus Schloss Eichholz, Wesseling: EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a method discovered in the late 1980s by an American psychologist named Francine Shapiro. She herself suffered from cancer and noticed by chance that the oppressive feeling she experienced when thinking about her illness changed when she moved her eyes quickly from left to right. She began to try out this technique on her friends, relatives, and later also on her patients – with success. Shapiro developed a form of therapy based on this discovery.

After only a few scientific studies, it was proven that EMDR works. However, the reason for the method's success remained unclear for a long time. Today we know that the mechanism behind this method is hidden in our brain: when we experience normal things, our brain has a system that integrates new experiences into those we have already had. The new is compared with the old and then stored in our internal library. The hippocampus region of the brain plays a crucial role in this process.

However, when we experience things that overwhelm our internal processing mechanisms – such as a serious accident, a disaster, or a threat from other people or violence – our brain does not use the normal storage process, but instead falls into a kind of emergency mode. This has the advantage that we do not really perceive and suffer the traumatic situation at that moment. In extreme cases, however, it means that the experience cannot be processed.

In around 70 percent of traumatic experiences, the normal processing process is then completed in the following weeks. In around 30 percent of cases, however, the information remains unprocessed. If the memory of the traumatic experience then resurfaces later, for example due to a trigger, it feels as if the situation has just happened – a so-called flashback. This leads to fear and a strong physical reaction.

EMDR allows the unprocessed experience to be fed into the normal processing process in the brain. It is then processed retrospectively and integrated into what has already been experienced, which means that in future, the person can think about the situation without feeling bad.

In 2018, a Korean working group was able to show how EMDR works in the brain using mice. The results of this study convinced even those who had previously doubted the effectiveness of the EMDR method. EMDR, it was shown, reduces the fear response in the midbrain. This involves the superior colliculi, which are the upper two hills of the quadrigeminal plate, the thalamus, and the amygdala. So when you think about the traumatic situation and simultaneously perform the rapid eye movements of EMDR, the thoughts of the situation trigger less and less anxiety and eventually no anxiety at all. With therapy from a well-trained EMDR expert, even severe trauma can be successfully treated.

Recorded by Stefanie Flunkert