What is EMDR?

What exactly is EMDR?

EMDR is a relatively new therapy developed in 1988 by Francine Shapiro. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitizing and Reprocessing. Here are a couple of links in case you want to check it out:

EMDR Institute (this website was touted by my therapist as the only website I should check out on EMDR. I just don't work that way, but it is a good resource).

EMDR- Wiki (Sorry, but I love me some Wiki)

My PTSD (Be careful with this website. It's a community forum, so you may read some triggering information on this site. I searched EMDR and read other people's experiences with the therapy. I suspect the therapy might be different for everyone because some people had experiences that I definitely did not have. So, as I said above, be careful. Read with an open mind and take everything with a grain of salt. Just because someone had a bad experience does not mean you automatically will too).

To be completely un-technical, EMDR is basically a therapy where you think about a disturbing memory while the left and right sides of your brain are stimulated continuously, one after the other, for a short amount of time. Most people report their memories being less disturbing after their brain is stimulated in this fashion. The theory is that emotional disturbance is caused by unprocessed memories. After a session of EMDR, memories associated with the disturbing memory may have come up for processing. My therapist explained it to me this way, in layman's terms:

Say your brain is like a filing cabinet. Some people are able to accept a memory and file it in the correct spot immediately, resulting in an orderly cabinet all the time. Other brains may look like a tornado went through. Papers scattered everywhere. Furniture tipped over, files spilling out. Dust flying up the air, waiting to settle. EMDR helps put the furniture back up right. Picks up those pieces of paper off the floor, and begins to put them in the correct alphabetical order within the files. Runs a duster over the entire room.

In that fashion, there can be lots of memories scattered about that someone is not even aware are out of their files. That's how the whole process has felt for me. I wish I'd written down my very first experience in session, but that was over a year ago. So I thought I'd share my experience from my last session, which was a couple of days ago-

*********Trigger Warnings: Emotional Abuse, Animal (Dog,Cat) Pain**********

Sessions always start with me and my therapist sitting down as she asks me how my week went. If anything disturbing happened, we hash that out. For example, a couple of weeks ago I found out that my mother has to have a double mastectomy, my brother may have congenital degenerative heart failure, and one of my absolute best couple friends is getting a divorce. I learned all this news in 2 days. Needless to say, we spent that session just talking. However, if I'm feeling good, we move along. A year ago, I chose "tappers" as my brain stimulation. Meaning, I hold little vibrating handles. EMDR can also be done with light instead of vibration. So, she hands me the tappers and asks me to begin some deep breathing. To relax. She then brings up whatever memory we are working on that day.

That day, we were working on a memory from when I was teenager. It was a day when I'd been chased home from the school bus by the neighbor kids. I was carrying my tenor saxophone case and in an absolute panic because it was so hard to run with that case. When I made it home and collapsed in the arm chair in the living room, my father appeared from the bathroom. Apparently, someone had used the last of the toilet paper and not changed the roll. My father, face red and angry, asked if I had done it. I honestly didn't know, but I shrugged. Most likely, disrespectfully. With his face even redder, he threw the empty cardboard tube at me and told me I was a selfish little bitch and a horrible person.

We start the EMDR session by me picturing this. My therapist always tells me to just observe the thoughts or memories that flow from here. Like watching scenery from a train. I'm not supposed to actively think, I just observe what comes next. As I was sitting there, eyes closed, remembering this event, my therapist starts the tapper.

Most of the time, memories just flow one into the other. Sometimes, I just sit there and my brain remembers the event in detail. Or my brain focuses on the anxiety of my stomach. This session was pretty normal though, and the memories began to flow. Straight from the memory of my dad throwing the tube at me, a flood wall gave out. Memories came seeping out very fast, seconds of events that slid into seconds of different events. These memories were all related to my college boyfriend. I saw the night we broke up, except I only saw me with tears streaming down my face, standing outside the University library in the rain. Then I saw a night at his house when he told me we'd never get back together right after we'd been intimate. This flashed to the memory of coming up behind his mom at one of his baseball games, only to hear her talking to her friend about her son's "trashy" girlfriend. To taking photos for one of his photography classes where he had to take pictures of a person, and he told me while I was posing that I looked hideous and couldn't I at least try to be pretty? Driving in his convertible to a 4th of July party as he's arguing with me about how much weight I've gained. Seeing him at a party, making out with one of my sorority sisters. Pushing me at a beach party. Telling me his friends hated me. Telling me that no one would ever love me because I was disgusting. When I say the memories flash, I mean flash. There was literally 1 second of each memory, and there were a lot more memories. By the time my therapist stopped the tappers to regroup, I was overwhelmed.

My therapist and I have concluded (long before this) that this college relationship was pretty traumatic. Memories from this relationship pop up repeatedly. As soon as I think I've "filed" all the memories, more come gushing out. I get frustrated but my therapist reminds me I'm trying to file an entire lifetime of memories that may not have been filed correctly. I've only been doing this a year in contrast to the 30+ years of memories I'm trying to muddle through.

After we regroup, we repeat the process usually 2-3 more times. We regroup every time and discuss the issues that arise. We always end with me focusing on my stomach because it's almost always anxious. By doing this technique, I'm usually able to quell the anxiety before I exit her office. I am always exhausted by this process. I tend to go home, collapse, and be completely useless the rest of the day. I don't cook, I don't clean, I can barely take my dogs outside. Depending on the severity of the session, the next day is usually exhaustive as well. I seem to come out of the fog on day 2, and unless it's PMS-time of the month, I feel good until I go back to her office.

It's hard work. But I'm feeling better than I have ever remembered feeling. Things that used to be impossible don't feel the same way to my body anymore. In the past, if I saw a dead dog or cat or even a bunny on the side of the road, I could be emotionally wiped for the rest of the day. The image would be burned in my brain. The image would flash up periodically throughout the day, tears pricking my eyes every time, the intrusive thoughts always picturing the poor animal gasping for its last breath. Completely alone. The thoughts that accompanied these experiences were always the same-

"There is so much pain in the world. So much pain it will never end."

"I cannot keep doing this. I cannot live the rest of my life feeling this way."

"We are doomed. We've destroyed our planet, each other, we hurt everything. What is the point?"

"I do not want to live. I can't do this anymore."

Anyone that is depressed can tell you how nearly impossible it is the live with these thoughts. How heavy and slow your body feels. How dragging a breath into your weary body feels like a 100-lb weight slowly bearing down on your chest. How even looking around the world feels murky and oppressive. However, I've been undergoing EMDR for over a year and I can readily tell you that those thoughts have been significantly reduced. I still get them occasionally, but my life isn't ruled by them any longer. I have also come to completely realize what people mean when they say, "Everything will be ok". I've heard these words my entire life, but they never developed one iota of comprehension until recently. The calm that comes with feeling rather than hearing that statement is truly something that every person can only understand for themselves once they've finally achieved it.

Some people recover repressed memories through EMDR. This has not happened to me. Every single memory that has come during EMDR is one I actively remember. My recovery of repressed memories has strictly come out of session. The reason I mention this is because my therapist and I did CBT for 1 year before we started the EMDR. My therapist wanted to make sure I had the tools to cope with whatever memories may come. Say what you want about CBT, but I'm a believer. The brain is a powerful instrument that we don't fully understand, but I believe there is something to be said for trying to change the way your brain works. A lot of the techniques I've learned from CBT work tremendously, diffusion being one of the most effective for me. In fact, when I had my latest flashback, I was able to diffuse almost immediately. Progress!

Feel free to email me with any questions you may have on EMDR. Please be aware that I am not a psychologist or therapist, I'm strictly a patient who can level with you on personal experience. As I mentioned above, I really do think everyone is different. My experience may not be your experience.

Till next time!

How Did I Become My Mom?

I have been writing and rewriting this post in my head. It's something I ponder quite a bit. I was just looking out the window, as the single-cup coffee brewer roared beside me, admiring the turtledoves that were roaming my garden. It warms my heart to see birds in the garden. I'm trying companion gardening this year, which means I've planted many different varieties of plants to encourage beneficial insects and birds to the garden. Besides the variety, I've added a bird bath. Hopefully to entice butterflies as much as birds to quench their thirst, and maybe stick around for lunch on a cucumber beetle. I catch myself thinking these things, and it makes me smile. If you'd know me growing up, you would find it so out of character that I concern myself with anything that involves being outdoors. And that's a tale that begins with my mom.

My mom and I have always had a complicated relationship. She had always pushed me to be more outgoing, and just generally out of my comfort zone. I begrudged her relentless couponing. Her frugalness embarrassed me in front of my friends. She was always trying to get me to help her outside, in the garden or with the lawn. I hated being outside. I hated getting dirty, and even worse, I had a monstrous fear of bees. A scream-and-run-for-your-life kind of fear. We fought. Constantly. I resented her so much, and the resentment didn't stop until I was 16. When I was 16, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. On top of the cancer diagnosis, my parents were going through a trial separation. It was a difficult time for both me and my brother. Because my father was temporarily out of the picture, I took his place in driving Mom to her chemo and radiation appointments. I also took his place as her confidante. I remember coming home from school so many days to my weepy mom, who would then place her head in my lap and sob. She confided in me things that no mom should have to confide to a child. My heart broke, every time. Silently, I made a vow to always protect my mom.

I can't remember the last time my mom and I had a fight. I can't remember the last time my little brother and my mom had a fight. The world changed when cancer hit.

My mother and father eventually reconciled. Mom and I retained our closeness for about 5 minutes. We didn't go back to a typical mother-daughter relationship, we are more like close acquaintances. I say acquaintances because we no longer share anything real. After what she's gone through in her life, my mom shut down emotionally. She copes with life by watching sports 24/7 and a glass of red wine at night. She'll talk to you all night about football but if I were to ask her to share any memories she has of her mom or childhood, the conversation would be over. Last September, my parents made their annual trip east to visit my husband and I. There was one really palpable moment where my mom and I were sitting on the back patio, and somehow the conversation started to turn genuine and emotional. I think we were talking about my therapy. I was in mid-sentence when I actively saw her eyes glaze over, and then she abruptly changed the subject. To sports.

I was so hurt in that moment. It's taken me a long time to accept that her behavior is not about me. It's about her. I have come to accept that that's just how my mom is. That moment took me back to one from childhood, and it's crazy how that's immediately where my mind went. It was a moment back when I was 13, or 14. I can't remember what we were doing, but my mom had taken me and my brother somewhere. Out of town, maybe for shopping? I do remember stopping at Arctic Circle (anyone remember those??). My mom was sitting next to me, and my brother across from us. My mom turned to me and asked how I got my eye lashes so curly. I was super-excited she asked, because at that age I was obsessed with makeup. I loved to talk about it. I excitedly began chattering away, and again, when I was in mid-sentence, my mom's eyes glazed over. She then turned to my brother and asked him about his cheeseburger. I was crushed. I can still remember, to this day, how stinging that was to me. Tears pricked my eyes, and I felt embarrassed for having shown my passion. Even today, I'm extremely sensitive to when a group of people I'm talking to doesn't care to be listening any longer. You don't have to stop me mid-breath, I know when to stop talking.

The way my mom is, is the exact opposite of how I want to be. My mom pushes her emotions down and in my opinion, doesn't process them. I tried for 32 years to not process my emotions, and I'm paying for it now. Immensely. Feeling a life time's worth of emotions all at once. It can be overwhelming, but I've come to realize, it's necessary. Yes, there is tons of pain that can bring on depressions. Yes, there are some days I do not want to get out of bed. Days I can't even brush my hair. Days where I'm crying from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. That's life though. These moments and feelings pass. You just have to wait for the feeling to crest, and then it will subside. Depression and anxiety are temporary. They always pass. It's the process of feeling that anxiety build, and looking for an inappropriate outlet that is unhealthy. My typical inappropriate outlets include vodka. Xanax. Vicodin. And more vodka. My mom's is football and ESPN 24 hours a day. Neither one is healthy, because neither deals with the problem at hand.

I'm either so much like her, or I've just learned to emulate her. Because yes, my first instinct with anxiety is to push it away. It's a problem I still struggle with today, a problem I will probably always struggle with. But I'm trying to be different. I'm trying to deal with my emotions in a healthy manner.

But you know what? I'm not just like her in the "bad" ways either. As an adult, I began couponing when A was laid off to save money. I got really into it. I ended up building a stockpile that A and I have been living off for 2 years. Man, did I catch grief on that one. Mowing the lawn became my chore, because I love being outside so much. Being outside in nature provides me with so much relief from all my feelings. It makes me feel one with the wind and sky. It helps me diffuse from emotions, and realize that most of my problems are problems created by society. People problems, I like to call them. I feel so at peace with a yoga playlist blaring in my ears, marching that lawn mower up and down the yard in rows. I love getting dirty. Screw garden gloves, you'll find me planting and pulling weeds with bare hands. I've actually read that getting your hands and feet in the dirt helps stave off depression. Bring it on, I say. While I'm still afraid of bees, EMDR helps every day with that (that's another topic entirely, one I will get to at some point). The more I age, the more it appears I picked up quite a few of her best qualities. Especially the ones I never expected to get.

Every once in awhile, A will suggest watching a movie or documentary and I will hem and haw, grumble, and drag my feet. It's times like those where he bursts out laughing and tells me I'm so much like my mom. 'Shall we just turn on sports?' he teases me. We have a good laugh, and then I change my mindset to watch the movie.

I may have inherited some of her less desirable traits, but I definitely got some of her finest. And some, all my own.

God IS Love

Running has been powerful therapy for me. I actually have no clue how it became an effective therapy for me, but I guess the point is that I found it. I was the child who hated to run. My mom made me play sports like soccer, basketball, and running track. I hated them all because they involved an exorbitant amount of running, soccer being the worst of all the sports my mom made me play. I just physically hated the feeling of running. My legs got tired, I could never find a rhythm to breathe, and I was slow. I would start to feel that cold sensation in my chest when I couldn't breathe, and there is nothing I hated more than that sensation. I seemed to have no endurance. How my brother was blessed with the tempo and endurance of a marathon runner, I'll never know. When I got to high school, I was deemed fit to choose my sports. I chose volleyball and dance team. In volleyball, the only running we did was during daily doubles and everyone knew the running only lasted 2 weeks. On dance team, I believe we only ran 1 time and it was because our coach couldn't get us to simmer the fuck down.

I knew what was up. I knew where the running was and where it wasn't. So how I became a runner as an adult is nothing short of a miracle.

When I first began therapy in the fall of 2013, I was given techniques to release stress and self-soothe. I was really good at pushing myself past my limits at that point, and not so good at taking it easy. I would rush into my therapist office, spit out an entire laundry list of things I wanted to accomplish that day, and then proceed to sit there and worry I wouldn't get it all done. I was wound as tight as Giselle Bundchen's ass. One of the first concepts the therapist and I needed to conquer was the concept that I needed time each day to relax. To have me time. My therapist suggested running. I looked at her like she'd grown a third tit. 'Never' I thought in that stubborn head of mine.

Never came sooner than I thought. A and I signed up for a breast cancer 5k, and we decided to do some training so we could run it. On our first practice run, I couldn't even run half a mile. It was summer, 70+ degrees, and I thought I was going. to. die. I think more water came out of my body on that first run than I'd ever put in my body! I ended up walking most of those first 3 miles, but everyone has to start somewhere. I ended up doing a combination of running and walking for that first 5k, but I was kind of hooked. I didn't feel the same way I felt when I was younger. I've thought about this so many times, and the only thing I can come up with is that I hated running because I felt like people were making me do it. And I don't do anything well when someone is making me do it.

It took me a couple of months before I could run a straight mile. It took me even longer before I could run a straight 3 miles. But along the way, I found something else. Something indescribable about myself. I could take the pain. I could handle the dead legs and the feeling that my heart was going to explode inside my chest. With each foot pounding the payment, I told myself that I was strong. That if I could handle this physical pain, I could handle anything. Any kind of mental pain, I could withstand. Every run I finished gave me such a high. A and I signed up for oodles of races.

We did one run during a very cold winter called the "Jingle Bell Jog". It was a night race, something A and I'd never done, and something we've never done again. The night was clear, but so very cold, around 30º I think. I stood in one spot, and jumped up and down until the race began. Once it began though, I calmed. Quite a bit. I found my pace, and tuned into my music. The race took us through downtown of our extremely small town, along the river, and under the bridge that separates Ohio from Kentucky.   I was running under the bridge, listening to Rihanna's "We Found Love", and staring up at the clear, frigid night sky. The stars seemed so bright, like I could reach out and touch them. Just then, for whatever reason, I tuned into a lyric in the song as Rihanna sang, "We found love in a hopeless place".

That resonated with me. A and I live in a despondently depressed area. The town at one time prospered, however large employers have since moved out of the area. The population is shrinking, and the population that has stuck around is largely on drugs. Pills are huge around here, although heroin and meth are becoming much cheaper and easier to come by since the local police began to crack down on pills. There are no unique restaurants, only chains. No unique stores, only Walmart and Kroger are left. The town is crumbling and dilapidated. Yet, as I ran along the river, I could not help but notice the beauty around me. The battered flood wall, covered with murals depicting the town's storied past. The way the large blue-green bridge gleamed in the moonlight. The water lapping gently at the rocky shore. Hoards of pounding feet behind, and in front of me. And I only felt love. I felt so much love I felt my heart would beat out of chest.

And that's when I saw it.

Spray-painted on the underside of the big bridge were these exact words- "God IS Love".

I don't know why these words threw me, but they did. Yes, I am an atheist. As much of an atheist as one can be at least, as I am not arrogant enough to proclaim I 100% know there is no god. But what if? What if everything that theists's claim they know about "God" is false? Part of the reason I can't jump on the religion train is because I can't get on board with so much pain and so much suffering. I just can't. There is no reason in the world a gentle and loving creator would allow the things that happen on Earth to happen (please read this article if you need an example). The only explanation can be chaos, and a universe that doesn't care what happens to us. I have no idea why the human brain must insist that we are the pinnacle of evolution, that we are huge, that we are everything. It's mind-boggling. But what if "God" is that part of us that is "Love"?

I was really feeling it in that moment. I saw beauty all around me, in front of me, and behind. And I loved them all. I saw a pack of people not caring about anything but their feet hitting the payment, and the feeling of drawing one more clear burst of air into their lungs. I saw people that were running for a cause, because the Jingle Bell Jog was supporting the local food pantry. I saw a crowd that was doing the best that they possibly could in that very moment.

And I felt love.

I felt compassion.

'Could this be God?' I dreamily pondered. Could it be that "God" was not some figure-head in the sky, but an overwhelmingly warm feeling manifested out of our own bodies? If so, I never wanted to leave the moment.

But, as all moments do, it passed. I think I stumbled a few minutes later, and began to think about my ankle being a bit sore. A few minutes after that, I realized I was nearing the end and picked up the pace. And just a few minutes after that, I was sweaty and out of breath at the finish line, no doubt with a brain completely full of different thoughts.

I never forget that moment though. Seeing those words on the bridge is burned in my brain, a split-second I will never forget. I can close my eyes, and still see those words. Hauntingly beautiful in cheap, red, Walmart spray paint.

A lot of the time, it's hard to feel that way again. Every now and then, a run will make me that introspective. Yoga and mediation do the trick, too. I spend a lot of time mediating on love and its so-closely-related emotion, hate. Compassion. Empathy. Forgiveness. I mediate on these feelings, and try to let them encompass me. Let them open my heart, fill my body, and push out the doubt. The shame and heaviness that I'm convinced all humans feel. And you know what?

It makes me feel better.

I feel like this post flows freely into a post on forgiveness, so I'm going to stop there for today. The only thing I'm hoping people get out of this post today is to show you these technique that therapists try to get everyone to do- like exercise- they do work. They can work way more effectively than medicine sometimes, in my opinion. I'm also hoping you yourself might take some time to ponder on what I think is the most powerful emotion in the universe- love.

Till next time!