A journey through Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Another rest day for the Push-Up challenge, so another rest and self care day for me. Which again means an opportunity to share a different, incredible, story with insights into experiences I cannot personally provide.
Sometimes in life we meet people that we can effortlessly connect with on a deep level. They immediately become comrades on the journey through mutual understanding. Lauren was one of those people for me, and has reconfirmed in me the power of sharing our story for continued learning and growth. She has taught me so much, and through her perspective I know she can teach you more about the amazing world we live in too.
PTSD is extremely widespread, and out of all mental illnesses has the most ways the diagnosis criteria can be met. This shows how many unique causes and factors there are, how different everyone's journey is. I have complex-PTSD and will go into my experience later, but I am only just starting treatment (which isn't EMDR). I have seen in others how valuable EMDR can be to explore, and that it may work wonders for many. It isn't well known though, so through reading Lauren's story and experience I hope we can all gain more knowledge about just how many tools are out there to assist anyone on a mental health journey.
Author: Lauren Starr
Over the last 2 years I have been on a massive internal journey of learning, grieving and healing. It has been hard, it has been painful, but it has also lead me to understand myself so much better. I have changed profoundly through this journey and slowly I am unearthing, working through, and healing past traumas. I still have a long way to go, but I don’t think the journey ever stops really. Here is a small insight into my experience with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
I never thought I needed psychology, I was getting on with my life and dealing it with fine. Family members needed psychology because they had depression and anxiety and they were worthy of the help, but I didn’t have those illnesses (or so I thought) so I don’t need it surely?! Never mind that over 20 years after my little brother’s death I still couldn’t talk about it or him. Never mind that I had anorexia for 15 years. Never mind that I got Chronic Fatigue and after 4 years of battling it was able to talk myself out of it through “talking to my brain” and desensitizing it and rewiring it. I didn’t need psychology, not because I thought it was shameful, but I truly thought that as I was getting on with my life surely there was no problem?
It wasn’t until over 2 years into a mysterious array of physical symptoms that couldn’t be diagnosed as an injury or illness, that I started to think more laterally and considered that maybe I had suppressed emotional pain that was manifesting as physical symptoms. (On a side note, 4 years later I finally have a diagnosis- it is musculoskeletal after all)
After a lot of research into different types of psychology, I decided that I would do EMDR as I wanted to do a type of depth psychology that would delve into my past and attempt to heal my trapped emotions. Also, I was recommended a psychologist who practices EMDR and I always like to see health practitioners based off personal recommendations.
The first step was to see my GP and ask for a referral and a mental health care plan, which involves doing some questionnaires to assess your mental health. I was surprised to see that I had moderate anxiety, which I was not aware of. Comparing myself to a family member with severe anxiety, I did not feel like I displayed any of those traits, however, mental illnesses manifest themselves in many different ways. It turns out that the feeling of my throat closing over, struggling to breath and nausea were all symptoms of anxiety (amongst other symptoms).
On my first trip to the psychologist I had to do some more detailed questionnaires and also a timeline of major events in my life. I had to get my mum to help with me the timeline to remember dates. That first step of seeing traumatic events listed out chronologically made me realize that hmm, there probably is a problem here… a child can’t go through the deaths of 5 immediate family members in quick succession (amongst other things) and carry on as if nothing even happened without some kind of repercussion!
After this first introductory session we started to delve into some specific memories. This is when it started to get confronting. The reason those memories have been buried is because they were too painful to deal with and my coping mechanism was to block it all out and pretend it wasn’t happening.
It soon became apparent to my psychologist and myself that I have PTSD. This stemmed from events surrounding my younger brother’s hospitalization, physical deterioration and death when I was age 6-8. For me, I have deep ingrained wounds of helplessness, rejection and abandonment. This is despite being able to rationalize and understand the events that happened at that time. But the rational conscious mind is not the same as the emotional subconscious mind and often cannot influence those deep visceral feelings.
Seemingly trivial events, remarks and happenings throughout my life often hit me really hard emotionally and I could never understand why. Anything that triggers feelings of being undervalued, unappreciated, unloved, unwanted (whether real or just self-perceived) channels back to those deep past wounds. So, I experience emotional pain of the past events as well as the current event, I also experience physical symptoms of nausea, tight chest, sore and blocked throat. I have a strong need for control and struggle to allow or trust other people to do things for me.
I am aware of this now and often can retrospectively understand and attempt to rationalize my response to things. However, for most of my life I was completely unaware of this. I didn’t understand why my emotions were so on the surface and I would break down at the tip of a hat or why things that people would say or do would hurt me so deeply, whilst in other people they could seemingly brush it off. My Dad would always tell me not to take things so personally and to stop wearing my heart on my sleeve. I also struggle to let go of hurts- they build up inside me as an ever-mounting pool of evidence of my unworthiness and proof that certain people don’t really love me or appreciate me.
I am still at an early stage in the treatment process. I am beginning to identify when I am getting triggered and start to understand the emotions I am feeling, but I am unable to influence or diffuse those emotions yet.
The process of EMDR involves bringing up a memory and placing yourself back in the memory- really seeing it and feeling it. Then whilst you are focusing on that the therapist moves her finger back and forth and you track it with your eyes. My therapist can alternatively rhythmically tap my knees if I am crying too much to be able to focus with my eyes. The theory behind this it is that the eye movement activates deeper brain activation that enables your brain to access the more primal parts of the brain where the deep memories and emotions are stored. It is believed that it is a similar process to REM sleep. This enables you to not only remember things you previously couldn’t, but also better process the emotions associated with those memories and transform the negative self-beliefs associated with them.
My experience is that it unleashes a torrent of emotions, feelings and memories some of which I was unaware I even had. It can be very overwhelming and upsetting. I feel the emotions so viscerally. It makes me understand emotions and feelings I have though and connections between different events. I have a lot of realizations in these sessions. Sometimes I leave the sessions feeling drained and hopeless. It is working though as now we can revisit some memories that we have worked on extensively and they no longer elicit an emotional response. Where they were previously highly distressing memories, they are now simply neutral memories.
Every 30 seconds to 1 minute my psychologist will stop, ask me to take a deep breath and reassess what I am feeling- physically and/or emotionally. Often, I feel physical symptoms as well as emotions, thoughts and memories. Sometimes she will ask me what beliefs I have about myself after focusing on a memory. Sometimes she will ask me to focus on a certain memory or emotion or physical feeling and ask it what purpose it is serving. It sounds cliché, but it often really helps to delve deeper and understand. Sometimes I have to put myself back into a memory by holding a certain thought in my mind and this can then change the emotional charge associated with the memory.
When I started on this journey I started to feel incredibly depressed, the worse I have ever felt actually. I was experiencing a lot of survivor’s guilt, which I experienced briefly immediately after my brother’s death, but had not experienced since due to blocking out all thoughts and memories of him. Unsurprising really, when I was starting to lift the lid on a Pandora’s box of highly traumatic memories from childhood that I had never dealt with or even allowed myself to think about. This terrible feeling did not last too long though thankfully.
PTSD is associated with many disturbing symptoms and negative health effects due to your body being in a constant state of high alert. Thankfully, I feel as though my PTSD is fairly mild, but symptoms that I have experienced include:
- Upsetting memories/flashbacks
- Feeling physically and psychologically distressed when thinking of the event
- Not wanting to talk or think about the event
- Trouble remembering important parts of the event
- Having very negative beliefs about myself, others and the world and therefore difficulty trusting people
- Feeling detached/cut off from certain people
- Persistently felt angry throughout my teenage years
- Difficulties sleeping
- Engaged in self-destructive behaviour (anorexia)
- Very easily startled and jumpy
- Nightmares
- Survivor’s guilt
- Feeling as though my life may be cut short
PTSD is strongly associated with developing other mental health issues and chronic diseases. In one study war veterans with PTSD were 3 times more likely to develop heart disease than age and physicality matched citizens without PTSD. I developed Irritable Bowel Syndrome in my early teens and continue to have a lot of gut trouble, I also suffered from Chronic Fatigue in my early to mid-twenties. I am hoping that as I am now working on neutralising my traumatic memories and desensitizing my neurology I will reduce the negative impact on my body and reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases later in life.
Other modalities that I have found very helpful include:
- Journaling to help consolidate my feelings from the day and any emotions or memories that have come up and also to help me remember more and realise connections.
- Art therapy to explore my feelings and work through troubling memories and emotions
- Talking to my family about past traumatic events
- Watching home videos and looking at photos of my brother to create and reinforce positive memories
I am lucky to have an incredible support network around me who have helped me through this and I can always turn too. Despite this, sometimes I feel like I am completely alone and that no one really understands or gets me. A close friend told me something when I was feeling strong survivor’s guilt a couple of years ago that really stuck with me: he said to honour my brother’s short life by living my life to the absolute maximum, enjoying every day and experience, loving fully- both others and myself. I strive to do this and in the tough times remind myself of how lucky I am.
Still We Rise.