Dallas BraggFormer crystal methamphetamine user, I help men who have sex with men break free from the addictive patterns associated with Chemsex. Currently expanding my expertise by seeking to become a Certified

AfterMeth Podcast Shorts: Unlocking Trapped Memories

30 May 2025 · 1 min

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1:07

In this short segment of the AfterMeth Podcast, the host explains how Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy works by targeting memories that remain highly reactive and emotionally charged. The speaker emphasizes that for EMDR to be effective, the memory must carry a strong emotional charge; otherwise, it cannot be fully processed. Examples of such memories include traumatic events like rape or assault, as well as relational wounds such as parental neglect or volatility. These unprocessed memories reside in working memory, linked to the brain’s fear response system. Consequently, everyday triggers—rejection, raised voices, conflict, or anger—can reactivate these memories, leading the brain to anticipate abandonment. The segment outlines the mechanism by which EMDR aims to release these “trapped” memories, reducing the fear response and breaking the cycle of trigger‑induced anxiety.

Chapters

So when people come in for EMDR, what we're doing is we are taking memories that are still highly reactive. So memories that we have a big emotional response to, memories that feel like there's a big, you know, pull from, right? This doesn't mean we're like boohoo crying about the memory or anything like that. Sometimes, right? But it could be anything from a rape, it could be an assault, it could be, you know, like you kind of were saying, like, my dad wouldn't show up for me, right? Or like, my mom was very volatile in the household, right? Like kind of memories like that, right? Yeah. But there has to be an emotional charge, right? And the reason why is because if there's not an emotional charge there, you can't necessarily always process. So what I mean by that is like that memory is not fully processed, right? It's somewhere in the working memory. It's something there that feels like it's trapped in the part of our brain where the fear response is activated, right? So our brain obviously has different associations. So when we face things like rejection, someone raising their voice, conflict, anger, whatever it might be, right? Our brain jumps to those different memories, right? So our brain's going to, when someone's upset with me, it means that they're gonna leave me.