EMDR and Trauma:

During the process of your therapy you may be asked if you would consider doing EMDR as a form of psychotherapy. It is important that you know what happens during this process and what we actually know about how this works. Most of the therapists at Westmount Psychological Services do practice EMDR and this requires added training, as it is not incorporated into the regular programs at university. It is a highly specialized form of psychotherapy that was originally designed for the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However as research into trauma has grown, we are now more aware of how not everyone suffering from traumatic experiences had to have big traumas (such as going to war) in order for these traumas to have a long and lasting effect.

It has been noted that people that have experienced very difficult events at times when they were overwhelmed and could not process them store these memories with all the attached impressions (thoughts, feelings, body sensations) as unprocessed memories in their brains. Then when something happens years later that one might think, feel or even physically react to in the same manner then that old trauma is again triggered and the person reacts to the present event the same way that they reacted to the original experience.

An example:

Martin is an only child and his parents have never had time for him. He is lonely and sad but when you look at his life it appears that he has a really good one. He goes to a private school, is well dressed, has great vacations and lives in a really nice house. But Martin does not feel cared about; no one seems to be interested in him or what he does and when he tries to approach anyone they just get angry with him and tell him to figure things out himself. Martin is too young to be able to process these events so he stores them as unprocessed memories and grows up believing that something is wrong with him; people do not want to be with him and he makes everyone angry. So now Martin is sad all the time; he is lonely but does nothing to make friends and/or have a social life. He hates himself because he sees everyone else having fun and he spends every weekend alone. Now more than ever he knows that there is something wrong and he truly believes that it is him. He is riddled with shame and anger.

So when Martin goes to his boss and asks to speak with him and the boss tells him that he has too much to do so could they speak tomorrow, Martin reacts with the same feelings and beliefs that he did when his parents rejected him years ago. He cannot hear that the boss has a problem and therefore cannot see him right away; he reacts that he is the problem and why should the boss want to talk to him anyway. He leaves feeling shame and painful emotions of more rejection and sadness.

How can EMDR help Martin: The goal of EMDR is to desensitize the emotions that still occur when old traumas are accessed and thus allow you to process them so that you can move forward and change the lens that you use to view your world. So with Martin we would use EMDR to help him access the pain of believing that he is not good enough – of being flawed – and help soothe that pain so he could reprocess what happened to him as a child and come to the realization that what was flawed was his parent’s parenting techniques – not him. This will also help Martin to begin to recognize many of the other times in his life that simple events built onto the original trauma and how – unless processed – it will continue to grow (e.g. the boss asking him to wait until tomorrow).

How big does the trauma have to be?

EMDR began by being used for big traumas such as Viet Nam veterans and more recent events such as the Okalahoma bombing. But the idea that someone needed to have had a big trauma to experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is no longer substantiated.  Many smaller events in one’s life can lead to some PTSD (such as Martin’s neglect, divorce, health problems, etc.) and can as demonstrated grow to be much bigger over time. We call these small T’s (T for trauma) rather than the big T’s of war or severe injury such as rape or assault. But nonetheless small T’s accumulate and can have the same effect as a big ‘T’ later in life. So we often hear people tell us that nothing really horrible ever happened but just a lot of small things that were hard to live with; however all these little events accumulate into bigger traumas and shape the lens that one uses to view their world.

How do you do it?

We begin by bringing up a painful memory and helping you to find the right negative belief that you have about yourself – like Martin’s belief “I am not good enough” and using the memory and the belief we will ask you to follow a light stream from left to right; we may also use tones that you will hear from earphones. After about approximately 25 cycles we will stop the light  bar and ask you what memories are coming up for you. Slowly as this process continues and you address the memories that are connected to that negative belief you will process them and free yourself of the hurt and pain related to those events. So Martin would process any memories of when he felt ‘not good enough’ and recognize that this was his reaction and not necessarily the other person’s reality.

Summary:

EMDR is not a form of hypnotism nor does it create memories. It is a process that we use to help you to access your own unprocessed memories and help to soothe you so that you are capable of processing them. This form of therapy is often faster than other forms but it does not happen overnight. If there is a lot of trauma it can take a long time to reprocess all the bad memories. But EMDR does work for many people and for Martin the hope would be that it will allow him to look back and realize how sad it was to have grown up in a family where his parents neglected him – but he will no longer feel that strong emotional pain because he will be able to give back the responsibility of his parent’s actions to his parents. We will have helped him to connect what perhaps he has known for a long time (my parents did not know how to parent) with his maladaptive feelings of being the one that is flawed. This connection will allow him to move forward into a new reality and one that tells him he is important and valuable. But now he still needs to learn how to change his own behaviors so that he can learn to make friends and have a healthy social life, which will end the shame and loneliness.

If you would like to try EMDR, give us a call.

Written by: Judith Norton, R.N., Ph.D.