Understanding the EMDR Window of Tolerance and Its Significance in PTSD Treatment

If you have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), you may feel like your emotions are all over the place. You may go from feeling numb and disconnected from the world to feeling overwhelmed with anxiety and fear. Sometimes it might make sense why a memory was triggered. Other times, you might not have any idea that a memory is being triggered at all. You just suddenly feel emotions and body sensations flooding you. 

The experience can be very frustrating, and it may even seem like there is no way out. However, there is hope, and a type of therapy that is gaining popularity in recent times is proving to be highly effective in treating PTSD. This therapy is called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). In this blog, we will talk about the EMDR window of tolerance and its significance in PTSD treatment.

What is EMDR?

Before we dive into what EMDR window of tolerance is and how it affects PTSD treatment, let us first understand what EMDR is. EMDR is a therapy that uses bilateral stimulation to help individuals process traumatic experiences. What in the world is bilateral stimulation? Great question! It involves guided eye movements, or tapping, or audio/electronic stimulation, that essentially gets your brain’s attention left and right, left and right. After proper preparation, this simple and painless exercise is used while the therapist asks the individual to recall a traumatic or still painful event. This tapping or other forms of bilateral stimulation helps to bridge the left and right sides of the brain, which can improve emotional regulation and help to process traumatic memories.

What is the EMDR Window of Tolerance?

Now, let us move on to the EMDR window of tolerance. The window of tolerance is a term used to describe the optimal intensity of emotions in which an individual can efficiently and safely process traumatic memories. It is the zone in which an individual is able to feel their feelings, but not get overwhelmed or disconnected from their feelings. In this zone, people are able to effectively address traumatic experiences into their long-term memory without being overly distressed or triggering a dissociated (or disconnected, numbed out) state. It is a balance between having positive emotions and processing memories related to negative emotions.