EMDR Therapy & Trauma
Our brains have a natural way to recover from traumatic memories and events. This includes a lot of communication between different parts of the brain and body that we don’t even know is happening! Our brains and bodies just do it and it is incredible. In many cases, the communication lines are open and the event gets processed (ie healed) in a healthy way. But sometimes, for one reason or another, a traumatic experience gets a little “stuck” and our brains can’t fully process it without help.
Think of it this way:
You are out for a walk and come across an old wooden bridge. As you cross, just minding your own business, enjoying the day and the view, you mindlessly slide your hand along the railing, feeling the rough weathered wood beneath your hand. Suddenly the peace of the moment is shattered as a jagged splinter slides right into your hand, sending shooting pain up your arm and all over your body. Ouch! You look down and see a 3 inch piece of scraggly old wood sticking out of your hand. With a sharp breath and a muttered curse, you pull the splinter out. While it hurts and is NOT what you wanted to have happen, you aren’t really worried. You’ll plaster it with Neosporin and a bandaid when you get home and move on. Your body knows what to do and you trust it will heal up fine on its own.
But let’s say you didn’t get it all. The splinter was actually much longer than you thought and a big chunk has been left behind, buried deep in your palm where you can’t see it.
Within a few days, the palm of your hand becomes swollen and sore, more painful than the day it happened. You spike a fever. Every heartbeat sends throbbing pain up your arm. You are not ok.
Your body’s natural healing process - the same process that had taken care of dozens of wounds in the past - cannot heal around the junk left behind in your palm. For the body to do what it’s meant to do - HEAL - the splinter has to be fully removed. You (and your body) can’t do it alone. You need help.
At the doctor’s office, treatment begins. While it is painful and uncomfortable, everyone there knows that for the body to do what it is made to do (heal itself), the splinter and the infection have to be cleaned out. Once that happens, the body can resume its natural healing process.
That’s what EMDR Therapy does. Through the process of EMDR, we work together to remove the left-behind splinters of previous trauma so that the brain’s natural healing process can resume. The ability to heal is already within you! We just have to remove the stuff that’s in the way so that healing can continue.
So what do left-over splinters look like? In other words, what are some of the symptoms of unprocessed trauma? The examples are endless, but here are just a few:
A dog barks. You break out in a cold sweat, your heart starts hammering and you want to RUN.
Your spouse seems inattentive and you are flooded with rage. You want to scream.
A friend seems to slight you and you begin to scramble to do “whatever it takes” to fix the relationship, even if it harms you
You’re driving and a truck comes up beside you: your heart starts pumping, the back of your neck tingles and you grip the wheel so tight your fingers cramp
Your spouse, whom you love and trust, touches you and you pull away in disgust.
You awake from the nightmare of the rape, again.
Your body aches constantly and the doctors can find nothing physically wrong with you (that’s called somatic memory, by the way, and it’s very, very real)
There’s a constant sense within you that you don’t really know who you are or what you want
You hate yourself
You hate your spouse
You hate someone for what they did to you
You’ve determined to “put the past in the past” but the past seems to keep popping up to bother you.
These are all responses that are based on a “past” event that didn’t get fully processed and is now stored in the brain and body in a way that causes pain or difficulty in your present life. With EMDR therapy, we can remove those stuck things and help the brain and body resume the natural healing process. You really can be healed.