Can EMDR Help You Remember Something You’re Not Sure Happened?
EMDR Therapy in Colorado Springs
EMDR and Unclear Trauma Memories
It’s very common for clients to come to therapy saying things like, “I don’t remember a lot of my childhood,” or “I grew up with a lot of trauma but I can’t pinpoint specific memories.” We can definitely work with this in EMDR, and decide together what’s important to process.
At times, though, people come to EMDR saying something a little different about what they don’t exactly remember, more along the lines of…
I have pieces of something. I have an image, or a body sensation, or a fragment of memory that shows up frequently but I don’t know if it’s real. I don't know whether what I think might have happened actually happened. It replays in my mind and it bothers me… Can EMDR help me know what really happened?
The short answer is that EMDR can help you work with the distress connected to an unclear or fragmented memory, but it can't tell you for certain whether something happened. You don't need a complete memory in order to use EMDR, and recovering a forgotten memory isn't the goal of treatment.
Can EMDR recover repressed or forgotten memories?
The way I answer this question is that the goal of EMDR is not to recover repressed or forgotten memories - although that may happen, I can't promise that it will - the goal of EMDR is to reduce distress, and to process what’s stuck to a point of resolution.
If fragments of an uncertain memory are causing distress, we can use EMDR to work with those fragmented pieces and the way they are affecting you now. The memory may or may not become clearer along the way.
If you have a fragment of a memory, an image, a body sensation, an emotion, or even the distressing thought “What if something happened to me?”, we can work with what is actually there. The goal is to help your brain process the disturbance you experience, not to force the missing pieces into a complete story.
EMDR isn't a tool for determining whether something happened. Its purpose isn't to recover a memory, and a therapist can't promise that EMDR will make an unclear memory complete or tell you whether it is historically accurate - but, you don't necessarily need a complete memory in order to work with the distress you're experiencing.
Sometimes additional information or memories do emerge during EMDR. Sometimes they don't. Either way, healing does not depend upon recovering a complete memory.
How does EMDR help if I don’t remember my trauma clearly?
EMDR doesn't require you to have a complete, detailed memory in order to begin processing. We can start with what you do have… an image, a sensation in your body, an emotion, a fragment of memory, or even the thought or question that keeps coming back.
What matters for EMDR is that something is disturbing you now. We can identify what happens when the fragment comes up, what you feel in your body, what emotions are connected to it, and what you believe about yourself when you notice it. Those pieces give us something to work with even when the larger story is unclear.
During EMDR processing, your brain may begin making connections with other memories and experiences. We sometimes describe this as accessing related memory networks. Other memories, thoughts, emotions, sensations, or associations may come up, and your brain can begin connecting the disturbing material with information and experiences that are more adaptive - things you know or understand now that weren't available to you at the time.
People sometimes worry that this means EMDR will uncover increasingly disturbing memories or make things worse. That isn't the goal, and good EMDR therapy doesn't go looking for memories that aren't there. We follow what naturally emerges during processing rather than trying to create or uncover a particular story.
In my experience, often the original memory fragment doesn't become dramatically clearer at all. What changes instead is its power. The image may stop intruding. The body sensation may disappear. The question may no longer feel urgent or frightening. Something that once felt disturbing can begin to feel distant, neutral, or simply less important.
And ultimately, that's what we're trying to accomplish - not necessarily knowing every detail of what happened, but helping you reach a place where what you do remember is no longer causing the same distress.
Good EMDR therapy doesn't try to fill in the blanks for you
When a memory is unclear, I think it's especially important that a therapist is careful not to decide what happened for you.
A therapist shouldn't ask leading questions, tell you what a fragment of memory “must mean,” or treat something that emerges during processing as proof that an event occurred. Memory isn't a perfect recording of our experiences, and something feeling vivid or emotionally intense doesn't necessarily establish exactly what happened.
Instead, we can stay curious about whatever comes up without needing to immediately interpret it. My job isn't to convince you that something did or did not happen. My job is to help you safely process the thoughts, feelings, sensations and memories that are causing distress.
That means we can hold uncertainty when uncertainty is what exists.
For some people, memories or connections do become more during EMDR. For others, they don't. Sometimes the most meaningful change isn't finally having an answer to “What happened?” but realizing that the question itself no longer has the same hold on you.
You don't have to recover every missing piece of your past in order to heal from the way it is affecting you now.
