Posted by slugdoo on July 26, 2007, at 13:17:26
In reply to Re: EMDR links? » slugdoo, posted by B2chica on July 26, 2007, at 10:42:29
Okay I am back from yoga now. I just read a great book on EMDR I got from the library and I have read most of them out there. But it is called Transforming Trauma EMDR by Laurel Parnell, Ph.D.
If you look this book on Amazon, you can read the first chapter which talks about her experiece as a patient. This book was so good I read it cover to cover in one day. She talkes about her experieces as being a patient and her experiences using it on her own clients.There are many ways to do the bi-lateral movements. Most use their fingers, but some use a lighted bar, some use head phones and do "ear movents from left ear to right". They can even do it for blind people by tapping on their knees. It is great that there are many methods because some child are really young or some have disabliities and such.
Most people know their worst memories and when you start your session you focus on ususally the worst one. You think about the worst memory, the sounds, smells, feelings you felt at the time, for me it is like "reliving it". Now that is the tough part, but it only lasts for a couple of minutes because you will get results rather quickey so the tough part doesn't last long.
They say when you have something tragic happen to you , your brain "freezes" the event and doesn't contine to process it. That is why war vetrans have flash backs, and nightmares and are triggered very easily back into the war, even it it was decades ago. Well the eye movements work a lot like REM sleep, it unblocks the memory, and alows you to process it fully to a manageable state. You will never forget the memory, but the emotional intensisity of the feeling will disapate and you will not be as upset or emotional when you recall the memory. So you will find that you are triggered less often because you "feelings" about what happened to you, are less intense. Then the negative feelings that you ususally get from what happened to you, ex. It was my fault, will be replaced by a more rational believe, ex. "I was too young to do anything about it". or "i really wasn't a bad child, it was X who was the bad one". Then they do eyemovents with you thinking of the new belief that goes along with that tragic memory.
Now what is really neat is that when you choose the worst memory, and focus on that doing the EMDR, it also works sometimes on other memories that are less intense at the same time. My T says it is like unclogging the major clog, a lot of little clogs go right along with it down the drain. So sometimes everything can be cleared up in only a few sessions, but really there is no way to really know how many session it will take. One thing is if you don't focus on the worst memory, it will get take you there, like it did for me. Sometimes you forget things, kinda like your session, it was your mother, who upset you because she didnt' protect you. That might have come up if you were focusing on the tramatic event you had. EMDR isn't for recoving memories, it is mostly for dealing with the memories you have. Most people know their worst memory. But for someone like me who has had systematic ritual abuse all my childhood, there were a lot of stuff I surpressed so I don't remember all the worst stuff, so other stuff come out that was worse than the worst memory I focused on.
One of my professiors in school, also uses EMDR too, and he talked about a session where (not his client) was even too fearful to be in the room alone with him, well her T went along with her to the appointment. So I guess that might be an option if your T doesn't do it herself, and that would be too tramatic to do that with someone new..
Now after you do the process, you should feel a lot better afterwards, in most cases, but your brain still continues to process it even severaly hours after the session. It is exhausting, really, so you need to make sure you don't have anything too important to do afterwards.
I posted about me doing EMDR for the first time about 2 years ago on this site. It was scary for me because I had atypical reactions.
Now if it isn't your T who does this, the other therapist will want to get to know you some. Will also want to make sure you have a safe place to go if you need to.
It is really cool because if they have to stop a session before you can fully reprocess a memory, they might do EMDR while you are thinking of your safe place. And it really calms you down, it was amzing really .
It was the cataylst for me in therapy 2 years ago. Now I found out I need some more EMDR. I am scared, I go in 1 1/2 weeks. I have EMDR one day and the next day I am doing talk therapy with my T to talk about what happened. 'Did I answer your questions or do you have more?
poster:slugdoo
thread:772054
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20070726/msgs/772111.html