EMDR and me

[scarlettina]

Years ago, after explicitly diagnosing me with PTSD as a result of my experience with my mother's illness and death (a diagnosis that had been gently implied by other therapists), my then-therapist recommended that I undergo EMDR treatment. EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, a therapeutic technique in which the therapist moves her hand or an item like a pen in specific ways and the patient follows that movement with her eyes. The idea is to disrupt the usual neurological processes and desensitize the system to traumatic memories so that the patient can cope with the old trauma. This was back in the early, maybe the mid-1990s when the technique was still relatively new and not very well understood. I'm writing about this because I' have occasionally wondered if I should seek it out again (why I haven't will become evident shortly), also because several people have remarked that they, too, took the treatment and wanted to discuss their experience.

I attended two sessions. The first session, if I recall correctly, was a sort of overview of my history and scoping of my issues. We talked about the technique and what I should expect. The second session included the actual technique, working with the therapist and with the eye-movement exercise. The session as a whole lasted about 90 minutes. It was so awful that it took me a full day to recover. I don't remember many of the specifics. What I do remember is working with images associated with my mother's illness and death. And then, about halfway through, I remember a pain so intense that I thought my head was splitting open. I expected that my skull was going to crack and my brains were going to come flying out. I was told that was the trauma manifesting and that I should go with it. Well, I went with it, and I was in so much pain that I ended up curled over in my chair practically screaming. For about an hour. It was worse than my worst migraine headache, some of the worst pain I've ever experienced. (Even thinking about it now, I'm experiencing some mild discomfort.) I don't remember more than that except that I called in sick to work the next day. As I said, I never went back.

Now, I know that EMDR requires multiple sessions and that the work is supposed to include a balancing element to help the patient regain composure. I know there's a lot more to it than this experience. But I also know this: when the cure is worse than the illness, you have to make some decisions. At the time, I decided not to continue to pursue treatment. The trauma was bad; the treatment felt like torture.

Why would I consider investigating it again? Well, a couple of reasons. First, there's Sh*t going on, with a capital S, in case it wasn't clear from my last post. Second, I never did finish the treatment, and the way I'm dealing with this Sh*t, it's clear that there's a lot of other stuff underneath it that's hindering my coping mechanisms. Why won't I seek out EMDR again? Well, insult, meet injury, and all that. But I also promised myself that I wouldn't seek out any kind of therapy again because I've pretty much talked my issues to death. I recognize them, understand them, and I'm bored with them, frankly. That doesn't mean they're not important; they are. But at this juncture, I don't see the point of sitting in a stranger's office hashing it all out yet again. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, then going into therapy for the umpteenth time is probably the perfect illustration of that axiom. For me, right now, it's not an option I'm interested in.

My sister-in-law once asked me if therapy makes things better, making things stop hurting. After thinking about it for a moment, I told her that things rarely stop hurting, but what therapy can do is teach you how to deal with the pain in constructive and healing ways. Right now, I don't need more therapy. I need to use what I've learned in therapy to deal with whatever pain I'm experiencing.

So, that's my EMDR history. How about you? What's your experience been?

My LJ writing to-do list. I really need to get to it.
--Weight and invisibility
--My first Seattle International Film Festival event of the year
--My experience with EMDR treatment for PTSD
--My general weight loss situation at the moment
--My upcoming publication and the essay related to the story in question

Comments

[anaka.livejournal.com]

It put an end to my ex's near constant panic attacks when they got really bad. The kind of pain you're describing wasn't as aspect of his treatment, though, nor was it something I read about in the research I did. That might be chalked up to a bad call on the doctor's part.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

It might indeed have been a bad call on the therapist's part; like I said, this was early on after the development of the method. And I'm certain that it works for other people because, say what I will about it, it's clear that something dramatic was happening--even something effective or perhaps it's more appropriate to say affective. EMDR was still being referred to as experimental at the time. I remember specifically having it explained to me that stress manifests in different parts of the body, and that we would periodically check on where I was feeling discomfort. My suspicion is that the level of distress I felt was 15-20 years of grief and anger manifesting all at once. The doctor's bad call was letting it get to the point it did all at once, rather than helping me find a way to bleed it out gradually.

[seattle-janice.livejournal.com]

My experience was a lot like that. It got to the point where the thought of going made me queasy.

[varina8.livejournal.com]

I'm a little wonky today (4+ hours of sleep will do that) but wanted to reply as soon as possible. I did EMDR in 2001. I did not have the kind of overwhelming pain you did. That said, I do remember the experience as being intense.

My therapist did not bring it in until we'd been meeting together for a couple of months. We started alternating an EMDR session with a session or two talking about what came up, then did another EMDR session. One thing I remember clearly is the therapist warning me not to kitchen sink. Take one image from the event, work with it, move on. It was very slow, lots of back and forth on how I was doing. She was a lot like a good groundman during an acid trip, not that I know anything about that.

I think so much depends on the skill of the therapist. EMDR seemed to work well for me, despite my initial resistance to doing it, because we did other things too. The gains from other exercises and approaches seemed to work hand-in-hand with the EMDR sessions.

Oddly enough, some of the most effective tools came out of The Artist's Way. When I mentioned to the therapist that I'd started doing it, her attitude was: okay, let's see what that brings to the table.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

That was fascinating (and scary). I'd never heard of EMDR before this post.

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

I talked about EMDR with my therapist, but did not pursue it. What I did was use one of the techniques on my own.

The technique I am talking about is alternating body parts, like walking or tapping with one hand and then the other. Doing that while thinking (carefully) about some painful things helped me let go of some of the pain.

I still struggle with my stuff and I hate the way it hampers me, but therapy did help me deal with things that I couldn't on my own and I am glad about that.

I hope you make good use of the skills you learned.

*HUGS*

[criada.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine has done the shoulder-tapping thing on his own, with good results. His descriptions of the treatment make me wonder, thanks to my own experience with pattern-induced epilepsy, if EMDR is basically like inducing a seizure.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

That's kind of a terrifying thought, frankly, at least to me. And if that's the case, then for myself I can't see doing it without supervision of some kind. it just seems like asking for trouble.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean it to be terrifying! I'm specifically talking about petit mal seizures, not the big scary grand mal ones with all the body shaking. A seizure is an interruption in the electrical flow of neurons, while PTSD creates situations where we can't turn off that flow. My theory is that the Chicago Block, that Ken got, briefly stops that flow long enough to let the brain reset and notice that actually, they don't need to be in fight-or-flight mode.
My suspicion is that EMDR, in being similar to petit mal seizures, is like a neurological slap to the face: a brief order to the nervous system to stop for a second and calm down.
By being in fight or flight mode, our psyche doesn't have to stop and think about the trauma. But of course, we have to think about the trauma in order to get over it. I hadn't heard about the intense flashbacks one can get with EMDR, but that's still consistent with my petit mal theory. Many times, when I've had petit mals, the period right before the seizure itself (which is just a brief moment of unawareness)is often accompanied by deja vu and sometimes stomach-churning emotions and memories. It's as if, in normal life, I'm on a train moving so fast, I can't see what's outside. But then, the train slows for a moment, then stops, and I can glance the weird, sometimes terrifying stuff out the window. Then the train starts up again, and everything's back to a comfortable blur.

[criada.livejournal.com]

I should probably finish my metaphor by saying that we need to remember that occasionally the train will slow down, we will see some awful monsters just outside the window, but that we're also still in the train, and that the monsters outside can't hurt us.

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

That had never occurred to me. An interesting theory. I always thought of it as just a calming technique that lets your brain process the emotions instead of getting stuck in them.

[spazzychic.livejournal.com]

I found it valuable for me, but only after about a dozen sessions. Deep seated stuff is deep, and it takes a while to process.

[e-bourne.livejournal.com]

I don't personally have any experience, however Jay has and found it difficult but very helpful. Marti has also used it and found it life changing (in a good way). Which I'm inclined to agree it was for her.

For you to have been in such agony sounds like the therapist sucked and may not have fully understood the forces she was working with.