Unlocking Healing
How EMDR Therapy and Bilateral Stimulation Support Healing: A Guide for Therapists
As therapists, we know that the root of many presenting symptoms lies in our clients’ unresolved past experiences. These experiences can leave clients feeling stuck, repeating patterns, or responding to present situations with heightened emotions they don’t fully understand. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy offers a structured, evidence-based way to address these roots, helping clients process and integrate their experiences for lasting healing.
In this guide, we’ll explore how EMDR works and the critical role bilateral stimulation (BLS) plays in helping your clients heal. You’ll learn both the science and practical applications so you can use this approach to assist your clients effectively.
Why Do Past Experiences Stay Stuck?
When clients experience trauma or distressing events, their brain may not process the memory fully. This is often because the client needed to get through the situation at the time — maybe their life and survival depended on it — so their brain didn’t have the time or capacity to process what happened. Instead of being stored adaptively, the memory can become "stuck" in a raw, fragmented state. This can lead to:
Overactive emotional responses (e.g., anxiety, fear, anger, guilt, shame) tied to triggers that feel out of proportion to the current situation.
Negative beliefs about themselves, others, or the world (e.g., "I’m not safe," "I’m not good enough," “I can’t trust anyone,” “People aren’t safe”).
Somatic symptoms like tension, pain, or dysregulation rooted in the body’s response to the original event. This could be a hyper-arousal response (heightened reaction with an increase in heart and breathing rate, shaking, over-alertness to sensory stimuli) or hypo-arousal response (a slowing down of heart and breathing rate, lowered blood pressure, feeling heavy, foggy, or weighed down). These are natural responses to negative, adverse, or traumatic situations.
Think of these unprocessed memories as "misfiled" in the brain. Our body and brain usually move toward healing and health. But, in challenging situations our natural progression toward health and information processing is interrupted. The unprocessed memories remain emotionally charged, easily triggered, and disconnected from the adaptive networks that could help resolve them. EMDR therapy is designed to help clients process these memories and integrate them into their broader understanding, reducing their emotional intensity and enabling more adaptive functioning.
One of the unique components of EMDR is bilateral stimulation (BLS), such as side-to-side eye movements, alternating tactile taps, or auditory tones. BLS acts as a powerful tool to help the brain access, process, and integrate distressing memories.
Here’s how BLS works in EMDR therapy:
Activating Memory Networks:
BLS helps clients recall distressing memories in a way that feels more distant and contained. This dual attention — focusing on the memory while engaging in BLS — reduces the emotional charge and activates both hemispheres of the brain.
BLS stimulates the brain's natural information-processing system, similar to what occurs during REM sleep when emotional and cognitive processing takes place.
Processing Stuck Memories:
Brain imaging research shows that BLS facilitates communication between the amygdala (emotional processing center), hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex (logical reasoning center and access to adaptive information). BLS engages the hippocampus, helping clients contextualize memories, and reduces amygdala hyper-activation, calming the fight-or-flight response.
BLS sets are short (30-seconds, about the span of working memory). This allows clients to access the memory without being as overwhelmed and start making connections to adaptive information.
Brain imaging studies suggest that BLS promotes interhemispheric communication (right brain — left brain), supporting the reorganization of traumatic memories into adaptive networks.
For example, a client might move from "I’m powerless" to "I did the best I could," integrating new insights and perspectives. Or a sensation from the time of the event is activated, and then flows through and releases, replacing the uncomfortable sensation with calm, relaxed, or neutral sensations.
Facilitating Adaptive Integration:
As BLS continues, the brain links the distressing memory to adaptive information in adaptive neural networks, such as positive beliefs, resilience, and affect. Clients often report feeling a shift in their thoughts, emotions, or body sensations — like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
The memory becomes less vivid and emotionally intense, more distant, transforming it into a neutral or manageable experience.
These findings align with the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, which forms the foundation of EMDR therapy. By using BLS, you’re helping the brain unlock its natural healing potential.