EMDR is the best therapy I have found to bring compassion to myself
I have fallen in love with EMDR therapy: Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. I have not experienced trauma with a Big T, but the little traumas seem traumatic enough. After years of forays into Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), coaching, and various courses and interventions, this one works the fastest and gets to the root of the issue. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference.
And importantly, EMDR is teaching me to be kind to myself. Before, I would jump away from hurtful memories like I had touched a hot coal. And I had not linked those old hurts to reactions I am having to situations to this day. Working through current and past distressing events, patterns are found and desensitisation means less sensitivity to future events in my life. Not through disassociation, but through compassion and understanding. And re-framing the event, past and current, to a more realistic and kind interpretation.
An old hurt which was playing out in my life right now – reworked using EMDR
Here is an example I worked through, which is cringe-worthy to share, as in no-one’s books would this be defined as a trauma. But for 5-year-old-me, it was momentous. I remember it to this day, and I am 50. I still feel the impact – as soon as I feel like someone is shouting at me – read: judging and disapproving, which we get all the time, right?!? – I feel the same shame and deep blush take over. I want to dig a hole. Not the reaction I want to take with me into the next 50 years.
From what I recall, I was at nursery school, and left the dressing-up clothes outside next to the the jungle gym. When I came in from play time, the teacher shouted at me (I think?) and told me to bring them in. No biggy. Must happen to a kid every minute of the day. However, I remember being deeply ashamed of the mistake I had made, a mistake which was really by mistake, and jolted out of a state of pre-occupation. Using EMDR, the root emotion was as deep feeling of unworthiness and not being safe. The WHOLE WORLD was not safe.
So, using EMDR, I reprogrammed the memory and turned it on its head. When I now think of that little girl, I feel deep compassion, and the memory is about the teacher explaining to me that I am human and make mistakes, she herself is human and makes mistakes. Shouting at me was a mistake. And that the world is held spiritually and I am safe and the world is a safe place. We are all human, worthy and safe. Which is a story I totally made up spontaneously during the session and is authentic for me. The memory, which is now a new memory, makes me smile.
Events today hurl me into a similar response – shame and fear. I had the same reaction during a work meeting this year and tried incredibly hard to cover it up and act all grown up. The reaction was valid as I now understand it, as the work I was presenting was dismissed. But now I can understand – no not understand, FEEL and BELIEVE – that my hurt reaction was human. And that my work may have been off the mark as I am human, and that the dismissal does not mean that I am not worthy or unsafe. In fact, I was born worthy and safe, spiritually.
How I use EMDR and manage the therapy proactively myself
I have an EMDR psychotherapist who I have been seeing on and off for 18 months. Depending on my state of mind and how deep and long I want to go, I can meet her twice a week for a month or go months with no EMDR sessions at all.
We have used various methods to stimulate or mimic lateral eye movements, the core of EMDR. Not that they have figured out exactly how it works, as the theory of linking the right and left hemisphere has been debunked. The psychotherapist has used her finger to move my eyes left to right in between talking, then there is a dot on an app, or not related to eye movement, tapping on opposite shoulders, or holding alternating pulsating cathodes. My personal theory is that all this distracts your mind while your heart can step in and heal you. Heal your thoughts, beliefs and reconnect you with Knowing.
Here is a caviet: the right therapist is key. I was put off EMDR about 10 years ago when I saw an intense therapist who seemed to expect a lot from me during the sessions. I felt like I wasn’t getting deep enough or having the insights she was expecting. My current therapist is neutral and holds the session professionally and coolly. This works for me, as I can direct the session and reprogramme memories and beliefs to be authentic with the heart of me.
For more reading…
I loved this blog from Amanda Ann Gregory on Psychology Today who explains the difference and complementary practice of talk ‘’top down’’ therapy and bottom up EMDR therapy and the like.
