Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy is an integrative approach that uses eye-movements/bilateral psychical stimulation to help process traumatic or adverse life experiences.

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An explantion for the effectiveness of EMDR is that by thinking back (thoughts, feelings, images) on traumatic experiences in combination with the eye movements, the natural processing is being stimulated. The eye movements engage the working memory, which helps process the experiences and gives room for different meaning-making (a different belief about oneself in regards to the traumatic experience). 

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Thus, the aim of EMDR is to integrate traumatic memories with adaptive information, so they can be stored differently (into the semantic memory). It will mean that instead of re-experiencing trauma, it will become "a memory", a part of one's narrative. 

 

 

See also:

https://www.emdraa.org/what-is-emdr/