EMDR

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing – a psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that has proven to be effective in the treatment of traumatic or disturbing life experiences

“The past affects the present even without our being aware of it.”

Francine Shapiro, author of Getting Past Your Past

Switching Protocols

The day Sarah, my therapist, suggested using EMDR I was perplexed. I had never heard of it and had the worst time remembering what the initials stood for. (Okay, I still have trouble remembering what they stand for. An easier name would have been nice, Francine.)

Sarah and I had already worked together for 8 months using a variety of counseling approaches. She had helped me tremendously with the grief and depression of becoming a widow, which was wonderful. But in other aspects of my life, I just felt stuck. And none of those approaches had phased the compulsive hand movements at all. Needless to say, I was getting frustrated with counseling. I was ready to try something new.

However, learning that a therapy session entailed concentrating on a traumatic memory while shifting my eyes from side to side sounded . . . strange. Hearing that this bilateral movement stimulates both hemispheres of the brain at the same time was stranger still. But saying this stimulus somehow by-passes the area of the brain where the trauma has become stuck was just bewildering. Ah, how? Why? From what I have read since experts aren’t exactly sure why EMDR works. After all, Ms. Shapiro only discovered this effect by accident one day as she was taking a walk through the woods.

But when Sarah instructed me to choose a calming place I could picture in my mind then give her a safe word to get me there – well, that was a bit alarming. I even called my daughter to warn her, just in case I suddenly started acting bonkers or something.

The worry was pointless, though. Pointless as well was trying to figure out how EMDR works. The real point is that it does.

Processing

The first couple of traumatic memories I processed were the violence at 3 and 4. I had tromped through those already with Sarah so didn’t expect much. Hence, it was surprising when many more clear details surrounding the beatings came back now. Surprising, too, was the way so many more memories related to my father kept intruding, distracting me. They seemed to be like links on a chain, all connected so it was difficult to concentrate on the target memory.

But even more surprising was the intense anger that surfaced. I had long said that I had given my father a pass about the violence simply because we had a good relationship after I became an adult. Now I realized that wasn’t totally true. Still, I fought that anger, desperately trying to push it back down, because in my experience anger was dangerous. Anger was scary. Anger could get you killed.

It wasn’t dramatic but at the end of each of these sessions something eased about those memories, all the memories with my father. The trauma faded.

My Horror Movie

Then we moved on to a new memory, the one with a doctor when I was 10.

The Doctor

He was a Pediatric ENT who had taken out my tonsils a few months earlier, so I had seen him several times and thought he was great. This day my mother had taken me to see him for an earache. But the moment he walked into the exam room I knew something was wrong. Where he normally joked and smiled, that day he was angry and rough while his face was flushed bright red. (Investigation later showed he had spent his lunch break at a local bar.)

As he examined my ear he was jerking my head around and hurting me. He declared he would have to clean my ear but that just frightened me more. When I hesitated to move to the big exam chair in the middle of the room, he grabbed my arm to pull me to it and force me to climb up. But when he let go I leapt from the chair and made a mad dash for the door to escape.

Sadly, I didn’t make it. He caught me at the door, slung an arm around my waist and basically threw me into the chair. Then he climbed into the chair as well and planted his knee across my chest to hold me down. I fought him for all I was worth but he just grabbed my flailing fists with one hand and a thin wire instrument with his other. He then proceeded to gouge around inside my sore ear to clean it, and quickly punctured my ear drum. All the while he was cursing and yelling how he would whip me if I was his child.

Dissociating

But the strange thing was at the instant when he grabbed me around the waist I somehow split. I now know what I did was dissociate but I sure did not understand that then. When he threw me into that chair a part of me stayed standing in front of the door. So, I just watched as he climbed into the chair on top of me. I just watched as my body kicked and fought to defend myself. I also watched as he punctured my eardrum- but I didn’t feel any of it. And through it all I watched as my mother stood behind that chair and never said a word. It was like viewing a horror movie.

Afterwards a nurse came to the room and helped me from the chair. Then she walked my mother and me down the hall to a utility closet that was filled with mops and things. It also had a large sink so she left us there for my mother to clean me up. As soon as the nurse left the room Alva suddenly found her voice. She began screaming at me for bleeding all over my favorite dress, as though I had ruined it on purpose. Up to that point my perspective had been of watching from a distance, but when I looked down and saw the blood – whoosh! Suddenly, everything was up close and personal again.

Shock

Still, my mother continued to scream all the way home because I had dared to upset her. She ran a stop sign almost causing an accident – but that was completely my fault as well. She screamed until we reached home. Her tirade stopped abruptly, though, when my father got a look at me and went ballistic. The next instant she was also furious at the doctor and completely on my side. How she described her behavior to my father I have no idea because I was immediately sent to bed. But for years after that any mention of a doctor visit sent me into complete panic.

Processing this memory was amazing. The relief was immediate and huge. I left Sarah’s office that day feeling more relaxed than I had in years. It was wonderful! In the journal that I had begun on my therapy sessions I described my feelings that day. “My heart felt light and I was thrilled, almost giddy.” That was the day that I learned the real value of EMDR therapy.

The Wall

I had been clearing memories with EMDR for about 6 months when a blank wall showed up in my mind at the end of a session. It was smooth concrete obviously sealing over a space in my brain. (Seeing gray brain matter surrounding this wall was decidedly creepy.) But it also really scared me because one of my greatest fears for years had been remembering forgotten childhood memories. I already knew I had an issue with amnesia due to other simple things I had forgotten as soon as they happened – such as my high school graduation or arguments with my husband. In fact, the very first day I met Sarah I declared to her that was one thing I did NOT want from counseling. If I had any blocked memories then I wanted them to stay just that – blocked.

Sarah explained that uncovering repressed memories could not be predicted. I might not have any repressed memories. If I did have some they might stay buried never to be remembered. But if buried memories did come back it would only be because my mind was sure I could handle them. I could be certain that my mind would not disclose more than I could cope with. That was a little reassuring.

But now looking at that blank, concrete wall I almost panicked. And I worried about it for the entire week before my next therapy appointment, afraid that Sarah would want me to tackle it. But she did not. She told me that it would crack only when my mind wanted it to, so I relaxed. As far as my conscious mind was concerned it would just stay sealed.

Progress

At some point during the fall of that year – so about 5 to 6 months after starting EMDR – I suddenly realized that my compulsive hand movements had improved. They had long been a simple twitching of my fingers that only showed up when I was driving, watching TV, or some other activity where my mind was distracted. I usually did not even notice them until my daughter, Jackie, would point them out. But after Jason died they got much more intense. Finally, on a car trip with Jackie they reached a point of complete misery for me.

Knowing that having my fingers continually clicking on the steering wheel was annoying to others in the car I was trying to stop my hands. Each time I did the jerks would simply transfer to my feet instead. Since I was driving rapidly down interstate highways at the time that hardly seemed safe, so I concentrated as hard as I could to stop both my hands and feet. The jerks immediately switched to my abdomen and the muscles twitching violently there was actually painful. But the moment I relaxed the finger twitching would start again. It was a vicious cycle that happened over and over. By the time we reached home many hours later I had determined that I needed help.

After working with Sarah for several weeks she had theorized that the hand movements were simply a reaction to the childhood violence. I was basically stuck in Fight or Flight mode. I had to be ready to defend myself at any moment – a concern that had naturally intensified after my husband’s death. So, this improvement now was very reassuring. For the first time when I noticed the twitching I could just take a deep breathe, relax, and the movements would stop. There was no longer that horrible gnawing anxiety build-up urging me to move them again.

Sarah also asked me if I was seeing any benefit from this type of therapy. I gave her a very resounding, “Yes!” I had recently asked my oldest grandson if he had noticed any changes in me since starting therapy and he had also quickly answered, “yes.” He told me that my hand movements were lots better – I didn’t move them nearly as much as before. (That was a surprise. I had no idea he had ever been aware of them.) But he also told me that I talked more now, starting conversations rather than waiting for someone else to speak first. I was a bit startled by both of those insights but very pleased.

The Cracked Wall

It was two months before I saw the wall again and this time it cracked immediately. I couldn’t prevent it. A jagged split zigzagged across the middle of that concrete patch. Then I watched as a small hole appeared in the center of that line as little bits of the rock fell away. Suddenly, the eyes of a small child stared back at me and we were both startled. But I was also immediately concerned seeing a child trapped behind it. I urged the child to make the hole bigger and they did until their whole face appeared. That’s when I realized that the child was me as a little girl – a startling realization!

The child Me was having trouble getting the hole any bigger so I decided I needed to help her. I know that sounds odd because it felt very odd – but this wasn’t a memory. Everything else I had processed during EMDR had been events – memories – I recognized from my past. This was happening right now, real time, in my head.

In reality I was sitting on a couch in Sarah’s office and following with my eyes as her hand moved back and forth. I absolutely understood that. But I also absolutely understood that somehow an inner part of me was standing somewhere in my mind focused on this wall as it crumbled in front of me. I saw it as clearly as any of the memories I had cleared. There was an adult Me standing on one side of this wall and a child Me staring back at me from the other side. And she needed help.

I dropped to my knees on my side of the wall and began tearing at it with my bare hands. After a few moments I glanced down and saw that I had scraped my hands on the rough concrete so they were bleeding. But I kept pulling at the wall. Finally, I had the hole big enough for the child Me to crawl through, and I urged her to do that. But she was obviously scared. She backed up to sit on the floor of what I now realized was a closet. Actually, it was a closet that I recognized – the one where I had hidden at age 4 the last time I locked my mother out of the house.

My life took a sudden left turn into the strange.