EMDR

I utilise EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) in my work. It is repeatedly cited as the gold standard for healing trauma…I tend to think of it as a bit of a miracle cure…not always but sometimes. And if we don’t get a miracle we certainly get a big shift in the problem. If we get no change, we likely have simply not hit the right spot.

To understand how it works it we need to understand a bit about the nature of psychological trauma. Trauma occurs when “something intolerable is happening to me and I can’t make it stop”. This occurs in degrees. It happens in war, in physical or sexual assaults, in car crashes, school bullying, or being berated, put down or neglected by a parent.

Trauma is about memories. As you read this you are creating a memory. It is composed of the context or narrative, (“I was reading a website”), everything your sense are taking in, colours, sights, sounds, smells touch, the room temperature), your internal (psychological/somatic) state (calm?, anxious?, excited? hungry?, heart rate, sore leg?), your emotional state (happy?, sad?, worried?) and your cognitive state (the background thoughts you hold at this moment…I’m stupid, smart, weak, powerful, shameful, an embarrassment). All of these pass through a tiny part of your brain called the hippocampus and, like the ingredients of a cake, get melded into a “resolved” memory. And it gets timestamped. Over time that memory softens like a cake.

When that memory is forming under intense pressure (the traumatic experience) the hippocampus (along with the Amygdala – our alarm system, and the Insula – our sense of our body) may become overwhelmed and stop functioning properly, creating a psychological injury. The hippocampus may only store fragments of the memory. An assault victim may only remember some features, like a beard or the smell of a certain cologne but no other features of their attacker. The ingredients of the memory don’t meld into a resolved memory but are stored in “raw state” and, like the ingredients of a cake retain the sharpness of those elements. These become the triggers. I smell a certain cologne and all the other components of that memory light up…I suddenly feel terrified, feel like I am in grave danger, feel powerless. And, usually, the memory doesn’t get time stamped. Another feature of traumatic memories is that, apparently, they don’t get spread around the brain like normal memories by stay located in one part of the brain…you’l see why this matters in a bit

And we create a truth about ourselves in these moments. Truths like, “I’m weak” (bullying), “I’m powerless/helpless”(assault), “I’m worthless/not good enough” (verbal abuse”, “I’m disgusting/dirty” sexual abuse). Note – those are common “truths”…everyone forms their own truth.

When I talk to people about traumatic memories one of my first questions is, :”How long ago does it FEEL like it happened?” Often the answer is weeks, days, yesterday. A flashback is when that memory feels like it is happening right now. That can be debilitating and terrifying. Try this for yourself. Think of an old memory from childhood. What can you remember about that incident? Okay – what did you have for dinner the next day? What were you , or the others wearing at that time? What did you do in the weekend before that? I very much doubt if you can answer those questions. Why not? they were all just things that happened. We remember things that have a strong emotional component and that we make truths about. Remembering a birthday may be associated with feeling loved. Remembering a fathers words of, “if you don’t do your homework you’ll fail” may be associated with feeling like a failure, not good enough, worthless.

In EMDR we activate the memory and then use bi-lateral stimulation to do two things. Firstly to force the memory to move around the brain as it is being worked on and secondly to distract you. You can’t resolve traumatic memoreis consciously. If we open the memory and then distract you, we give your semi conscious brain the ability to begin to meld those ingredients into a resolved memory. As we work through the process you begin to notice that the memory becomes less and less upsetting to think about and it may change. It may feel further away, it may lose colour. it may go from an experienced memory to a third party memory (you see it happening as a story, not experience it as if it is happening to you). Once that memory has the same levee of distress as thinking about breakfast (assuming breakfast was just a way to get food into you) we connect a different “truth” to that memory.

This can be a bit of destabilising experience for some people, because huge change can happen very quickly. Sometimes the meanings they have held onto about themselves vanish. A recent client reported back after we worked on a childhood memory that their life had been transformed. They had done something in the previous fortnight that they had never done…called friends. The childhood incident had left them with the truth that “I’m unloveable” so they never put any effort into friendships (fearing rejection) leaving their friends feeling that my client wasn’t interested in a friendship. They were surprised to find that everyone they called was delighted to hear from them and plans were made to reconnect.