I’ll try to cut a long story short.
In my previous few posts, I talked about how I was supposed to be doing EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing) therapy to help me process past trauma, but then my therapist said I wasn’t engaging with my emotions enough for it to work. She referred me to a CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) therapist so I could do ERP (Exposure Response Prevention) therapy for my OCD ( Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) while I waited for a psychologist referral (I have still not heard anything about this referral but that’s ok). While doing ERP (which has been going pretty well, to be honest), that therapist said that she thought I was engaging with my emotions, contrary to my previous therapist’s beliefs. I was still eager to work on my trauma, so the two therapists had a chat, and decided that we would stop having ERP sessions for the time being (I’m still working on various exposures by myself every day), and have some EMDR sessions. Phew, I sound like a random letter generator.
I had my first proper EMDR session on Thursday. And by proper, I mean, we’d got further than we had previously, and into the actual eye movement stuff. I thought I’d just write a little post to give you a taster of what the first session was like and how I’ve been feeling since! Of course, not every EMDR session will be the same for everyone, so I can obviously only speak for my own experience!
So. These sessions are going to focus on my relationship and breakup with my ex girlfriend (being the thing that triggered a whole lot of shit, and, by definition of traumatic, still causes me huge amounts of distress even now). In Thursday’s session, we decided on three main memories or events from the relationship that are the most traumatic and hold the most emotional pain for me now. My therapist wrote this all down. For each memory, she asked me what thoughts and feelings I had at the time of these events occurring, where I felt these feelings (for example, I feel anxiety in my stomach), and got me to rate on a scale of 0-10 (0 being not distressing at all, and 10 being the worst thing ever), the amount of distress these memories cause me looking back on them now.
Heck, this part was hard, and I’d not even got to the finger wiggling stage yet.
I was very anxious going into the session anyway, knowing that I was going to have to face up to the worst parts of my life again, and talk about things that I don’t get a lot of chance to talk about any more. I knew I was going to become distressed and anxious in the session. That much was a given. I found it hard to even say the words when I was describing the things that happened. The first two memories focus on my fear that my girlfriend was going to leave me, and the last is when she actually did. Looking back at these memories in my mind is one difficult thing, but saying them out loud is a whole other kettle of fish.
Anyway. Each session is only going to focus on one memory. So we started with the ‘least’ distressing of the three. My therapist asked me to hold the memory in my mind. She said that as she started moving her fingers, to let my mind go wherever it needed to go. She sat close to me and held two fingers not too far in front of my eyes. She started moving them from left to right slowly, a bit like a clock pendulum. I had to follow her fingers by moving just my eyes, from left to right. After a while, she would stop and ask me what I was feeling. I’d tell her, and then she’d continue. Throughout the first few blocks, my emotions bubbled up and I started to feel really quite distressed. I felt increasingly anxious and I began to cry a bit. It was like the pain of the memory was coming back, as if it was happening now. Which is the point. When I told her I felt sad, she asked me where the sadness was in my body (again, in my stomach). She got me to visualize the size of the sadness and to focus on how it felt as she continued. After the next few blocks, I began to calm down. I stopped crying, and my heart rate felt like it was beginning to get back to normal. I felt the sadness in my stomach getting smaller. When she finished, she asked me how distressing the memory felt now, looking back. I rated it slightly lower than I had previously. Just like that. It’s like some of the pain was let out, and it didn’t make its way back in again.
The idea of EMDR is that when something traumatic occurs, sometimes, the event isn’t properly processed in the brain, which leads to it becoming kind of ‘stuck’ with all of its emotional charge. This is why the memory still feels so distressing and can prevent you from moving on. EMDR works by reactivating the memory (thinking about it and holding it in your mind), mimicking the eye movement of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep (where a lot of processing occurs), and therefore, giving your brain the opportunity to reprocess the event. The idea is that after successful EMDR, the event will just feel like any other neutral memory, or at least much less distressing and inhibiting than it was previously. As a psychology student and someone who is interested by the workings and processes of the brain, the science behind this technique absolutely fascinates me. It’s baffling, but it makes sense. I really did feel that even after a short amount of following a moving finger and allowing myself to feel those ‘stuck’ emotions, it took away some of the emotional charge.
I have a bit of homework to do between sessions, which basically involves listening to an EMDR soundtrack, which uses bilateral tones to alternate sounds between each ear, which simulates the same sort of eye movement as the finger moving. I have to do this 48 hours after the session, because apparently, after 48 hours, the processing of what we did in session is pretty much completed. If I keep doing this at home every couple of days, the idea is to get to a point where I can rate the memory as low as possible in distress, like a 1 or a 2. Then in the next session, we move onto the next memory.
Isn’t that just fascinating?? I am just baffled by it. It’s so cool.
Like I said, in session, I felt very anxious and lots of anxiety based feelings were coming out, as well as a great deal of sadness. This is all to be expected. My therapist said that I might continue to feel heightened emotions like these, or anger, or guilt, outside of session, too. She said this is normal. Yesterday evening, these feelings were getting pretty bad. The anxiety and sadness in particular, as well as a fair amount of guilt. It’s Saturday afternoon now, and I’m still feeling it, but a little less. I’m doing my homework later, so we’ll see how that goes. As well as the pain of ‘reliving’ upsetting experiences, I also felt pretty uncomfortable about the actual process while it was happening, too. I’m not much of a crier, least of all in front of people I don’t know, and although I knew that I was in a safe place, allowing myself to feel so vulnerable in front of someone I don’t know very well at all was really difficult. I felt like as my body was trying to resist feeling the things and letting out the tears, and failing, I was losing control. But like I said, I knew I was safe there, which helped.
So, there is the story thus far! I hope you find it as interesting as I do. My therapist said I actually responded really well, and that she finds that promising for future sessions. I just want to be able to move on from this relationship once and for all, and not feel like it holds me back in everything I do. Fingers crossed!
We Will Be OK. 