Bessel van der Kolk: How eye movements heal old trauma

Neuroimaging of people reliving trauma shows heightened activation in emotional/perceptual regions on the right side of the brain and shutdown in key left‑hemisphere cognitive areas, especially the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the brain’s “timekeeper.” This means in a triggered state, the body and brain experience the event as happening now, with little perspective or language. Effective healing must address this bodily and perceptual reliving, not just thoughts.

In EMDR, clients recall a traumatic experience while moving their eyes side to side (or following a therapist’s fingers). Research shows this bilateral eye movement activates pathways between self‑representation (temporoparietal junction) and body awareness (insula), helping the brain tag the event as “then, not now.” In van der Kolk’s NIH‑funded study, about 78% of adults with single‑event, adult‑onset trauma were completely cured of PTSD after EMDR; complex childhood trauma is more resistant but still treatable.

Trauma often leads people to either feel too much (hyperarousal) or too little (numbing) in their bodies. Practices like yoga, martial arts, qigong, massage, and rolfing help people feel physical sensations safely, expand movement patterns, and experience agency and pleasure in the body. For example, yoga has been shown in his studies to reactivate brain regions dampened by trauma, while martial arts can give formerly helpless people a visceral sense of strength and self‑protection.

Around 90% of his patients, by his estimate, have early experiences of being unseen, invalidated, or abused (“Nobody saw me. Nobody heard me.”). CDC ACE data shows that eradicating child abuse would drastically cut depression, addiction, suicide, and even physical diseases. Words alone can be deeply wounding—constant messages like “no one will ever like you” become core identity imprints. These early relational experiences profoundly shape how the brain maps the world and what a person expects from others.

In phase III trials of MDMA‑assisted therapy that he helped run, ~67% of participants no longer met PTSD criteria versus ~30% with therapy plus placebo. He emphasizes that the deeper change is not just symptom reduction but shifts in self‑relationship: people see their younger selves with compassion (“this poor kid”) and often feel compassion for perpetrators, recognizing their limitations. His own MDMA sessions exposed the vicarious pain he had carried from patients, making him “sadder but wiser” and more humble.