EMDR

When I was young, I had a way that helped me to deal with painful situations. In my head I created a long hallway that really went on forever. It was a memory storage vault. It was a dark place, but when troubled I would drag the memory there and throw it into the room and slam the door shut, and lock it. I really don’t know how many rooms there are, but I guess there are quite a few. It is surprising that I can still remember so much, for my memories go back to the crib. I am not saying my childhood was any more traumatic than anyone else; I just liked to lock up my memories.

Sometimes painful experiences can’t be processed properly, but get stuck in replaying themselves over and over again, leading to problems in life. I guess it is all about interpretation and perception. Our past dictates how we perceive the present in ways not often understood. I have found that insight and resolution can come by going back to those memories and reprocessing them as an adult. It is like giving the child more information leading to greater insight into the situation. The process that helps with this, going back and reliving a traumatic experience is called EMDR. The procedure is deceptively simple, it seems too easy, but it does work, at least it has from own experience. There are many web pages that deal with this kind of therapy; well worth the effort to look into, if one feels stuck and regular therapies don’t help. It is safe, and the results can be fast in coming, though of course personal work is always needed afterwards to live out the new perception of the event gone back to.

Often several sessions or needed, for some, possibly many sessions will be part of the process. For the core event is often a jump start into future events, which have something to do with the target point. I found it amazing how many memories I was able to get back in touch with and how reliving those experiences, allowed me to go back and see the primal point in a different, more mature and objective way. The brain then processes it the way it should have in the first place.

Writing and talking are very good ways of dealing with inner issues, yet there comes a time for many when it seems to stop working, it is then that EMDR seems to work best, or should I say that is when it worked best for me. The mind is amazing, and the journey one is taken on during a session can be a truly wonderful experience, though also painful, for in order to process some kind of reliving the experience is needed. For me the journey would proceed, and then suddenly I would experience a powerful emotional event, which then led to resolution. My facilitator also told me that some people don’t really experience anything, yet the process will still work itself out, all that is needed is for the mind to be allowed to do what must be done. Any kind of control will short circuit the whole process and really make it a waste of time. It is the letting go of control that is important. I have spoken to others who have experienced EMDR therapy and all of them have had the experience of reliving an event that caused trauma. I have yet to talk to anyone who says that they had no experience. So perhaps my facilitator told me that, so that I would not try to create some kind of event, there are no expectations, just let the process work on its own.

I am thankful for the experience of this kind of therapy, for it has helped get unstuck on some serious issues that I have struggled with all my life. Again it is not a magic bullet, I still have to work at it, it is just the emotional bubble is much less, so that I can now work on responding in a more rational level and not be manipulator by unresolved issues from the past.