EMDR

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I first heard of this term more than 10 years ago when I worked as a developmental optometrist at the Traumatic Brain Injury Outpatient Clinic in Minneapolis. I was asked by a patient’s psychologist if their visual deficits would prevent them from being able to participate in this treatment. I did a little research, and asked one of the staff psychologists at the clinic what they thought, and determined that it was fine to do as long as making saccadic eye movements didn’t result in significant somatic symptoms such as headaches or nausea. It would be many years later when I would participate in EMDR myself. I was struggling with anxiety and my therapist suggested that I try it, and I realize now this was the start of my embodiment journey. Prior to EMDR, I would get triggered quite frequently but had no idea that it was happening. I would feel physical symptoms such as a racing heart, feeling disconnected from reality, pins and needles in my body, and then it would shift directly to negative anxious thoughts and I would feel “bad”. So when my therapist explained to me that trauma is stored as a sensation in the body, that was real eye-opening (excuse the pun there will be many more i’m sure) . She asked me to think about a situation that caused me stress and asked me to identify where I felt it in my body. She also asked me to rate the intensity of the feeling from a scale of 1-10. I think I remember it feeling like a mass or knot below my left collarbone. She handed me two flat/egg shaped electrical devices that I would hold in each of my hands and it would pulse back and forth (left and right). She asked me to close my eyes and continue to feel the sensation and let me know that it could travel around my body and eventually it would subside. And it sure did, this was wild to me, I truly felt this mass/knot in my body move from my below my left collarbone, to my right collarbone, then up to my throat, and I sat there for about 7-10 minutes and eventually the feeling subsided. Then she asked me to bring up the stressful situation again in my mind, and see if I felt the same mass/knot in my body, I did, but it was less severe, then we went through the same process where I held the device in my hands as it pulsed back and forth between them and I concentrated on that feeling again. Once it subsided again, I again brought up that stressful situation in my mind and to my surprise, there was no reaction in my body or mind, just peace and quiet. Next she asked me what I wish could have happened with that event, this was a difficult concept for me to grasp at first, what did she mean what could have happened? I never thought to think about that, in my scenario, I had wished the person spoke to me in a caring way, with love and respect. Then she asked me to think of a statement to say to myself, such as “ I am a good person and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect” and I said that several times to myself and felt that feeling in my body.

We started off with smaller triggers and worked our way up to some big triggers, ones that I had been holding onto from childhood, and time and time again, I was amazed that afterwards, I could think of really traumatic events and did not have the physiological symptoms attached to them. I felt more calm, peaceful and in control.

I realized that I had loss connection with my physical body, it was my brain’s way of coping with all of the trauma that I had experienced from early childhood. EMDR was the start of my journey to connect with my body, and to be able to receive the wisdom that it holds. We are such a mental society, and we are rewarded for our intellect with praise and promotions, but when we ignore the body, we are shutting off our connection to the physical world, our Mother Earth, our spirtuality, and our intuition.

I wanted to mention that there is more than one way to do EMDR, eye movements is one way, the other way is what I did with the handheld vibrational device. I think the main point of this technique is bilateral stimulation, or stimulating both hemispheres of your brain. There is another similar technique called Brain Spotting, which differs from EMDR because you are not going back and forth between right and left, you are tracking a target to different areas of your visual field but has the same purpose which is processing trauma.

Over the years I have seen many of my patients benefit from EMDR as well, those with history of traumatic events such motor vehicle accidents, death of a loved one, survivors of abuse.

I highly recommend this book “The Body Keeps the Score” it is a fascinating read, and explains a lot of the concepts behind EMDR and Brainspotting, and gave me so much insight to my inner world. I also recommend the website : emdria.org to find an EMDR provider near you.