For the last month I’ve been meaning and wanting to talk about something but haven’t. Granted, I’ve hinted at it, most specifically by saying that I’ve been seeing a different therapist lately for trauma resolution. What I haven’t said is exactly how this therapist has been and is helping me. Sure, I’ve told my friends and family, but I haven’t written about it. Until now. Ugh. It’s not really something I want to do. Not because I don’t want to share my experiences (I do), but because I’m quite sure I’m not going to be able to adequately describe them. And I want to be able to adequately describe them. Because I think a lot of people could benefit from the knowledge.

So I’m going to try.

Let’s start here. Two years ago I read a book called Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro, the founder of EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a fairly well-known therapy that’s often used for the resolution of various types of trauma, including PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). According to Shapiro and from what I can remember, our past, unresolved stressful and traumatic experiences often and regularly negatively affect our current reactions and responses. For example, I’ve mentioned a number of times that I have a lot of money hangups, most likely because I was handed the family checkbook when I was fourteen and my dad went to prison. The idea being that early on my nervous system linked the feeling of “overwhelming” to finances, so that’s the way it’s responded to money ever since. Like, We can’t handle this.

Back to EMDR, the book recommended a number of self-help techniques, including creating a “safe” space for processing memories and crossing your arms across your chest and tapping in alternation to self-soothe. This “bilateral stimulation” is the crux of EMDR and is traditionally done by a therapist who moves their finger back and forth across your field of vision (eye movement) or taps one of your knees and then the other as you think about whatever it is that bothers you. The theory being that this back-and-forth activates and connects both sides of your brain and allows it to reframe stress and trauma in such a way that, instead of seeing past threats as ongoing, it sees them as finally over (desensitization and reprocessing). This brain connection can also be achieved with a moving light (light bar) instead of a therapist’s finger, or with little vibrating buzzers or pulsers (that you hold in your hands) in place of the taps. Or with headphones and audio tones that “ping pong” from one ear to the other.

You know, there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Other than the self-help exercises in the book, I didn’t actually try EMDR two years ago. I did discuss it with my therapist, but she didn’t know too much about it. Eventually, the whole thing got shelved. Well, a couple months ago I got (another) sinus infection and felt totally defeated. This is often the case when I get sinus infections. They are “that thing” for me, the thing that causes me to go down the rabbit hole of “I’m not good enough, I can’t take care care of myself, things will never get better, God hates me, and I’m doing everything I can but failing.” Anyway, I thought of EMDR. First because I realized that a handful of distressing emotions had long ago been lumped together with my sinus issues, and second because I remembered the book saying that EMDR can help with chronic pain. Later when I talked to an out-of-state friend who’s an EMDR practitioner, they said, “EMDR didn’t make my chronic health condition go away, but it did help it be not so overwhelming. After I went through the process, I stopped being paralyzed and started thinking, I can handle this. I can take care of myself.”

With that, and upon my friend’s recommendation to find an EMDR practitioner listed on the EMDR.com or EMDRIA.org website (because EMDR isn’t a trademarked process and, therefore, comes in many different flavors), I began my search, finally settling on a gentleman who “just felt right.”

My first appointment (out of four thus far) with him was a month ago, and it lasted two hours. For the first hour, we mainly talked. “Tell me why you’re here,” he said, and I told him basically what I just told you. Then we went through a lot of paperwork. Office stuff, but also a variety of tests, including ones on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), social anxiety, borderline personality disorder, depression in its numerous forms, and PTSD. “In order to bill your insurance, I have to have a diagnosis,” he said. And whereas I tested high for traumatic events, the only diagnosis he could offer was “generalized stress.”

“That sounds right,” I said. “I live with my parents.”

The second hour is when things got interesting, and this is the part of the process (the actual EMDR process) I’m worried about being able to describe. Again, I’m going to try. However, before I do I’d like to say this, just incase you’ve had an EMDR experience or in the future have an EMDR experience that’s different from what I’m about to describe. Before we even began my EMDR therapist said, “I used the standard EMDR protocol for years. It’s good, it works, and it gets things done. But now I use a modified protocol that–in my experience–is better and gets things done faster.”

“I’m all for fast,” I said.

“Well, I think you’ll be amazed at how quickly your brain can work,” he said. Then he explained that in ideal circumstances whenever something stressful or traumatic happens, the brain “moves” the information or event from the emotional right side of the brain to the non-emotional left side of the brain. This is what happens during REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, when you dream, and is why you can go to bed upset about something and wake up the next morning just fine, thinking, What was I so pissed off about in the first place? Well, it’s not that you didn’t have reason to be pissed off. It’s just that your brain PROCESSED the affair and, in so doing, took the charge, the zing, out of the equation. Like, yeah, shit happened, but so what?

I’m over it now.

Alas, sometimes our brain is unable to process our dramas and traumas because of something called “nodes.” Think of a street that has a road bump on it and how that keeps traffic from flowing smoothly across. Well, nodes are the road bumps in your brain that keep information from moving out of something called “a channel” in the right side of your brain to one in your left. EMDR removes the nodes.

Your brain does the rest.

As I understand it, traditional EMDR involves eight phases, including (but not limited to) creating a safe space, uninstalling old beliefs or cognitions, and reinstalling new ones. “Usually there’s a fair amount of talking,” my EMDR therapist said, “but you don’t even have to tell me what you want to process if you don’t want to. All you have to do is hold these little buzzers [one in each hand], close your eyes, and think of AN EVENT or FEELING that’s troublesome to you.” That’s the thing, he explained, our brains don’t store information based on time; they store or group information based on feeling (in a channel). So whenever something stressful or traumatic happens, the brain says, “When have we felt THIS WAY before?” and it subconsciously (out of your conscious awareness) brings up all the times in the past you’ve felt frightened, scared, intimidated, or whatever. “This is why you can be anxious or nervous or panicked or depressed and not know why,” he said. “Because you’re responding in the moment with the full weight of your UNPROCESSED past.”

Think about THAT.

Holding the buzzers that first session, I closed my eyes and focused on the fire that burned our family house down when I was four. It’s the earliest trauma and formative event (game changer) I can think of, I reasoned. Well, immediately I began to cry. Not just a little, but a lot. Full body kind of stuff. At the same time I felt overwhelmed, scared, frightened, and alone. Then–and this is the weird part–I started getting images of the dozens, if not hundreds, of times in my life I’ve felt these emotions. Once I heard a man with a photographic memory say that when he sees an oak tree he remembers EVERY TIME he’s ever seen an oak tree. The way you’d flip through the pages of a photo album. Well, it was like that. And then there was this time, and there there was that time.

This went on for thirty to forty-five minutes. Every ten to fifteen minutes we stopped for break, either after so many buzzes or when I was breathing too hard. That’s the thing, while holding the buzzers (that were continually going buzz, buzz, buzz) and thinking about my past, not only did I release emotions, but I also breathed heavily and, perhaps because I was getting too much oxygen, tingled throughout my hands, stomach, chest, throat, and head. Later I read that when being continuously bilaterally stimulated, some people “itch” inside their brains, theoretically because the brain is creating new neural pathways or “channels.” Getting back to our discussion about rapid eye movement, this new neural pathway creation is what happens during REM sleep and is what EMDR simulates. “But because you’re awake when it happens,” my EMDR therapist said, “you can CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE what you want to process.”

Talk about amazing.

I just said I was thinking about my past, but that’s not really accurate. I started thinking about my past, and then my brain took over. Honestly, it was like I was watching a two-part movie. The first part being called Here’s Why You Used to Believe and Feel the Way You Did, and the second part being called Here’s What We Believe and Feel Now (Better). That is, while I was breathing hard and feeling all kinds of emotions (“The key to healing is feeling,” my EMDR therapist said), I was getting image after image of everything that had contributed to, among other things, my belief that the world was a scary place or that something bad (like a fire and total loss) was going to happen. And whereas I wish I could tell you all of those memories, 1) I already have on this blog over the course of three years, and 2) it happened too fast for me to keep track of. You know how a hockey puck gets bounced around on the ice from player to player?

It was that quick, too quick to hold on to.

It was like a life review, the kind they say you get when you die. Your life in fast-motion. But more than being a review, it was a revelation. Like, Oh! That’s the burden I’ve been carrying. That piece was heavy, and that piece was heavy. Then my breath slowed down, and there was an unloading, a cognition that, Sweetheart, it’s over now. And here’s what we learned from all that crap. This cognition, my EMDR therapist says, is what happens when your brain truly processes something. There’s a peace to it, a resolution, an over-ness. “Personally, I think Shapiro got the name wrong,” he said. “Instead of re-processing, it should simply be processing.”

According to my EMDR therapist, my brain processed–for the first time–the event I focused on that that day (the fire) and all the emotions associated with it. “We opened and ‘cleaned out’ that channel,” he said, adding that the channel would stay open until I fell asleep that night, at which point it would close. For-ev-er. “So don’t think or talk about anything related to it,” he said, “not until tomorrow. If something comes up–and it will–don’t focus on it. Distract yourself.” Which is part of the reason I haven’t discussed this until now. One the days I have EMDR, I’m sentenced to silence.

Since that first session, I’ve worked on 1) my feeling of powerlessness related to my sinus issues, 2) my feeling of hopelessness around other health problems, and 3) my issues on the topic of money. And whereas I’ll spare you all the (even longer) details, I will say that each session has been just as weird and helpful as the first. On each topic, my brain has zinged and hockey-pucked around and has shown me in pictures and feelings all the dots that have connected over the years to form my life, beliefs, emotional responses, and actions up until now. Every time, there’s been a huge emotional release. I’ve cried, heaved, sweated, stomped my feet, clenched my fists, snarled, twitched, and hissed, all things my body WANTED to do when, for example, I was a teenager and my dad was arrested (sinus issues/feeling powerless). After the release, there’s been the cognition, which usually shows up in archetypal or movie images. (I don’t know if this is typical or because I often think of my life as a story.) The prisoner being set free. The hero returning home after a long journey. The child being embraced by their family.

A deep knowing that “it wasn’t your fault.”

The result of my four EMDR sessions is that–on every topic–I feel better. In general, I wake up happier, lighter. I went to a dance last night and didn’t compare myself to other people, like I usually do. At times, I’m euphoric for no reason. It’s like a weight has been lifted. In terms of money, I literally walked into my EMDR therapist’s office nervous and afraid about the topic and walked out feeling on top of the world, unintimidated. One week my regular therapist brought up money and I squirmed, and the next week I brought it up on my own accord. “LET’S TALK ABOUT MONEY!” I said. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s like I’m a different person. Or like I’m the same person with different wiring. Painful circuits have been unplugged. Other, more useful ones, have been plugged in. “If you put all your beliefs about yourself in a jar and then removed all the bad ones, what would be left?” my EMDR therapist says.

“All the good ones.”

One of the reasons I’ve spent so much time writing about this is that, quite frankly, I never knew my brain (and body) could process and resolve trauma so quickly. (Has anyone ever told you that?) I think of it like owning a luxury car that can do zero to sixty in three seconds but never being informed, “Hey, you’ve got something powerful there.” And so you treat your car (yourself) like an old jalopy, never taking it (yourself) out of second gear. There’s a scene in Disney’s The Sword in the Stone in which Merlin the wizard “packs up” his entire cottage with a spell. “Higitus Figitus,” he starts singing, and every book, table, chair, tea cup, and sugar bowl begins to shrink, shrink, shrink and dance itself into his small carpet bag. (Mary Poppins pulled a similar trick in reverse.) By the end of his chant, what used to weigh a ton is as light as a feather. This is what processing really does, takes something huge and shrinks it down to size. THIS is what my experience with EMDR has been like. That fast, that magical. This is what we’re truly capable of. Healing in the blink of an eye.