In AIP therapy, we make up each other’s umwelt. All organisms come into the world adapted to their umwelt and ours is the social environment. To sense and feel our way around it (like a turtle sensing magnetic north to navigate back to breeding grounds) we need Information processing that includes the establishment and maintenance of a mental model of self and other. Mental models generate the interpersonal environment within which we describe and predict how to collaboratively meet our needs. We imagine what we need, what we think others think we need, and what we think others need. This process often referred to as theory of mind, allows us to navigate in the social environment by communicating about our inner and outer experiences.

It is not uncommon to read about the profound bonding that takes place between a mother and infant during moments of gazing at one another. The “gaze transactions” involved in human attachment have been studied considerably and highlighted as central to our development in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. At the heart of these exchanges is information processing. However, our relationships with our pets can be the most convincing of teachers of why the relationship in EMDR is the healing system.

Memory is information we bring forward in time to use and it involves much more than merely facts and names of things. The time and context within which we engage with things and people is also stored and brought forth to help with everyday problem solving. The traditional approach to understanding memory is grounded in Pavlovian conditioning. You may be aware of the story of Pavlov’s dogs being trained to salivate at the ring of a bell after it was rung in conjunction with the presentation of meat. However, the concept of synaptic strength does not adequately explain how a bird with a brain only weighing a few grams can remember where it hides its food, who was watching at the time, where to find its favorite food once hidden, and when to get the tastiest morsels before they rot!

The magpie is among the corvid family of birds (not covid!) which includes jays and crows. They have considerably larger brains than other birds and are very social. Rather than assuming larger is better, let’s just consider how self-imagery is functional in it’s own umwelt.

What can a fruit fly teach us about the role sensing and perceiving has in EMDR? We all need to connect to our environment to meet our needs for living. The concept of an umwelt captures how each organism does this uniquely given its structure and functions. We sense and move towards what is good for by making meaning out of our experience. You may think of meaning making as reserved for humans. Or something separate and above our day to day bodily experiences. However, our ability to gather information and organize it into perceptions we can use to guide or behavior is a meaning making process. We do this through subjective information processing system. It is key to understanding how trauma, learning, and cultural accommodation (all things that contribute to disconnection) create context dependent features we work on in therapy. That is, what matters to us depends on what our umwelt looks like. Since our lives are so complex, I like to break some of it down by imagining drosophila’s life.

In this blog series I will be highlighting a few of my favorite examples of information processing concepts we find in organisms you might not think about when you think about EMDR. “EMDR as it is…” will help answer the question, “Why is EMDR such a robust psychotherapy ?”, by just noticing what is already around us that doesn’t require further research.

In this concluding installment of “The Science of Connection in a Disconnected World” we will review the key takeaways from this bog series on the Biopsychosocial-AIP model of EMDR. It’s been a challenge to decide what to put in and what to leave out of a subject that includes sub-personal, personal, and interpersonal properties. This is the challenge for therapists, clients, researchers, educators, and policy makers who may be inclined to accept more simple and less accurate account of adaptive information processing. No one sends their brain in to therapy to be perturbed by a therapist. Yet, that can be how therapists and clients approach EMDR which reduces its robustness. Worse still, if researchers neglect the psychosocial components of the AIP system our therapy will continue to to be obscured by critics who exploit its weakness of lacking a coherent integration of the theory, model, and mechanisms of action in EMDR. Likewise, it will be hard to resist the lure of profit making by putting forth methods that unwittingly leave clients still vulnerable to objectification. We are people seeking therapy, not brains. We are people who’s brains are directly effected by psychosocial dynamics, trying our best to make our way in a world of people that isn’t predictably focused on our needs. It’s hard enough to live in a world that exploits psychosocial components of our being that change our brain so it can make a profit, let alone work with a therapist that believes they don’t matter. Living in a disconnected world is intrinsic to being a life form. Making a living by promoting disconnection as a way of life doesn’t have to be!

Much of our subjective experience is determined by the activity of unconscious mental models that describe, predict, and monitor what they simulate. The study of our subjective experience falls under what philosophers call phenomenology. Phenomenal Modeling is an EMDR method I developed to help my clients and I collaboratively piece together their case formulation. A case formulation is a crucial part of EMDR and in BPS-AIP it helps clients evaluate unconscious mental models of self that are part of traumatization. This is an important initial step in the 8 phases of EMDR because our mental models shape how we connect in therapy! That is to say, the therapeutic relationship is directly responsible for positive trauma processing effects.

In this installment #2 of The Science of Connection in a Disconnected World, I’ll be exploring the central role that attention plays in the Biopsychosocial-AIP Model of EMDR. We will focus on the theory I introduced in my 2012 paper that states that adaptive information processing is the apex of the attachment system. The best model for psychotherapy is the securely attached child and caregiver. After a decade of being inspired by the application of these ideas, I proposed in 2022 that trauma is best defined as an absence of attentional agency. I believe we innately fear not being attended to and that much of the work of psychotherapy can be organized best by taking this into account. We will look into why attention may be the most important resource involved in human information processing and why being able to process information of all sorts is a life or death matter.

In this first installment of the “Science of Connection in a Disconnected World”, we will explore how the brain, self, and interpersonal relationships form an umwelt. An umwelt is the world of any organism as it is experienced by it. The inspiration for this piece comes from the non-fiction science writing of Ed Jong. You can read more about umwelten in his book “An Immense World”. We are all having an experience of the world that is unique to our individual set of senses that inform our behavior. Just as a spider uses its web to sense and feel the world around it, we use our web of social relationships. We don’t need to buy any special gear or achieve any great feat to connect with each other. Like the spider, we have the innate capacity to create a web of connection that will bring us what we need to thrive.