My first experience with EMDR was as a client. I had done a lot of talk therapy and found it very helpful, but I knew I had some deeper things to process. Despite all the insight I’d gained in therapy I was still stuck in patterns that no longer served me and couldn’t quite figure out why. With EMDR I was able to let my thoughts go where they needed to go in order to reprocess memories in a more adaptive way. The result was the sense of a weight being lifted from my whole body and less “noise” in my brain. I felt more confident and competent in all aspects of my life. EMDR is not easy, we still have to face our old memories, but it doesn’t require us to retraumatize ourselves by reliving our painful experiences.
Sometimes we can know something intellectually, but the experience is still stuck in our nervous system, coming out as instincts and driving our reactions to our world. EMDR isn’t about making sense of our past with logic, it’s about letting the body, emotions, and nervous system catch up with what the mind already knows: that the thing I am reacting to is over and no longer a threat. We can make all the logical sense in the world of our experiences, but if the body is not convinced the threat is over, it will keep reacting in ways to protect us from what it perceives as a threat.
As a therapist practicing EMDR, I offer my clients a space to be in touch with their experience but not feel pressure to relive the painful details for the purpose of processing them. EMDR can be done successfully with the therapist knowing very little about the details. My role is to facilitate the brain’s natural healing capacities.