How often do you speak unkindly to yourself throughout the course of a single day? Do you call yourself names, belittle yourself, undermine your competence, or harshly criticize your appearance? You are not alone. 

Many of us have a negative stream of thoughts running through our minds constantly. It is hard to make it through childhood, adolescence, and adulthood without picking up language that is unkind to ourselves. These thoughts may seem so second nature you may not even notice how pervasive they are.

How often do you find yourself stuck in a narrative about feeling unsafe, unlovable, or not good enough? You’re not alone in this, either. As we grow up and make sense of the world and our circumstances, it’s common for seeds of these beliefs to grow as we age, rooting our beliefs about ourselves into our everyday lives. Especially when trauma is involved. 

Trauma might be the hard things that happened to you, but it also might be the things that didn’t happen for you. As children, parents or caregivers may fail to give us the things we need for a healthy relationship with ourselves. This can include failing to give us:

◼ Attuned responses

◼Warm affection

◼ Encouragement

◼ Reassurance

◼ Rupture and repair

◼ Loving correction

◼ Good boundaries

◼ Respectful interactions

◼ Freedom to individuate

◼ Unconditional acceptance

◼ Help soothing painful emotions

◼ Help processing grief and loss

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an evidence-based method that can not only help you discover what negative thought patterns might be influencing your life, but also offer alternatives to improve your relationship with yourself. 

In EMDR, we call negative beliefs and thought patterns “negative cognitions.” 

Examples of negative cognitions: 

“I’m not good enough.” 

“I am unsafe.” 

“There is something wrong with me.” 

“I am weak.”

“I’m stupid.”

“It’s my fault.”

“I am a failure.” 

In general, a negative cognition is a thought or belief about oneself associated with a traumatic or distressing event. Negative cognitions can also be an expression of the emotion attached to the event, or how one’s mind tried to make sense of the event at the time. 

How does EMDR help with these thoughts? 

Making the implicit explicit 

Recognizing these thought patterns is an important step in any healing, as is finding ways to offer more compassion to ourselves and our system. When using EMDR, your clinician will help you identify your negative cognitions. Your EMDR therapist will also help you connect the negative cognition with a memory or memories, and use that as a way of uncovering the depth of the belief. 
It’s important to highlight that this part of EMDR, known as Phase 4 or processing, only occurs after you and your therapist have built enough trust with each other, and implemented successful ways of anchoring your nervous system (a phase called resourcing). Learn more about the eight phases of EMDR here.

Bilateral Stimulation

After your EMDR therapist prompts you to reconnect with the memory and negative cognition, they will guide you through right to left movement, also known as bilateral stimulation (BLS). The right to left movement or BLS serves two purposes 1) helps to maintain presence in the current moment while also touching stored distress  and 2) helps your system to metabolize old information into more updated, adaptive information eventually, resulting in the development of a new more adaptive, positive cognition. 

Your clinician will continue to guide you through this process until your mind has digested all of the negative memories, sensations, and beliefs that connect to this memory and belief.

Positive Cognitions

The therapist will then help your system move into the next phase of EMDR, Phase 5, where the negative cognition is replaced and enhanced in your system with a more positive, healthier thought. Note, EMDR cannot connect a lie with a lie. This means the positive, adaptive information must already be one that a part of you knows to be true and this can only happen if your system offers permission. 

Examples of positive cognitions: 

“I am safe now.”

  “I am enough.” 

“I am lovable.”

“I deserve good things.”

“I can trust myself.”

“I can handle it.”

“I am significant.”

”I have choices now.”

Once you and your therapist find the right positive cognition that fits the best, your therapist will guide you through more BLS to enhance the statement and anchor it into your nervous system. 

Think of the old, negative cognition as a crinkled, slightly worn out folder in a filing cabinet. EMDR takes that folder, opens it up, reorganizes it, and puts it back into the filing cabinet as a tidy, polished, and easy-to-find folder. 

You and your EMDR therapist will then take this positive statement and play it out in the future, further strengthening it in your body and mind. 

While this all might sound like cut and paste of the brain, it’s an intricate process that might take a few turns along the way. It might take time to create enough safety in the mind and body to allow a new way of looking at our past, present, and future. It might take some time to help your system build adaptive information in the present, here and now. But eventually with some time and additional processing, it can become easier to exist within yourself and move through life with greater ease.

If you are interested in working with one of our EMDR-trained therapists, click here to schedule a consultation. 

More Reading:

Understanding EMDR Therapy: A Simple Explanation of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing

Healing Through Bilateral Processing in EMDR: How does it work?

Top 5 Benefits of EMDR Intensive Retreats for Trauma Healing

Authorship: This blog was written by Katy Levine, LMSW. Katy (licensed in Washington, D.C., MD, VA, & PA), focuses on supporting clients with complex trauma history, attachment wounding, anxiety, and perfectionism, using IFS-informed EMDR. 

Disclaimer: The information in this blog is provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is not intended to be a substitute for mental health care nor a recommendation or endorsement for any particular treatment plan, organization, provider, professional service, or product. The information may change without notice. No claims, promises, or guarantees are made about the completeness, accuracy, currency, content or quality of information linked. You assume all responsibility and risk for any use of the information.

IFS EMDR Therapy Group is an outpatient therapy group founded by Morgan Levine. We specialize in helping adults struggling with the effects of living in dysfunctional systems move toward healing and wholeness. We provide therapy to address symptoms such as anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, grief, obsessive and compulsive thoughts and behaviors including but not limited to using work, perfectionism, substances, relationships, food, etc. We offer ongoing support as well as EMDR intensives; both of which are informed by IFS, EMDR, DBT, CBT, Polyvagal Theory, trauma-informed yoga, attachment, and other recovery principles.

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