EMDR is a great modern method for establishing a foundation for deep CPTSD work. If you do not know what either of these are, this post is for you. In the sections summarized below we’ll walk through EMDR and PTSD in easy-to-understand layman’s terms and provide some external resources along the way to get you started.
What Makes EMDR Such a Great Modern Method?
How Does EMDR Relate Emotions and The Body?
Will this Modern Method Work for Me?
How to Identify If You Have Trauma.
What Was Not the Best About EMDR.
How This Modern Method Might Fall Short.
EMDR at a Glance
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a great modern method for trauma recovery. EMDR uses a format of guided eye motion and reflective talk therapy intervals. The process is then repeated to explore the traumatic event. Guided eye motion is done using a light bar or having the therapist move their fingers back and forth. Either way, the idea is to follow this movement with your eyes while recounting the event. Eye movement can sometimes be combined with other body movements, like tapping with the hands or squeezing clickers.
What Makes EMDR Such a Great Modern Method?
The reason EMDR is such a good modern modality is because it focuses on emotions and how they are present in the body. I had a good therapist who implemented the process steps exactly as identified by the EMDR International Association (EMDRIA). When done this way, there is an objective process for getting the conscious mind out of the way by asking it to focus on a mental picture of the traumatic event.
This is important because subconscious thoughts and feelings can be recognized when the conscious mind is busy and out of the way.
How Does EMDR Relate Emotions and The Body?
For trauma work, accessing subconscious thoughts is important as a lot of coping strategies exist around minimizing or repressing emotions in the moment to survive them. Telling ourselves that things were not that bad allows us to stay in our logical minds and manage life around us. Some coping strategies might be conscious, and some might be subconscious. EMDR allows a structured way for you to let these conscious guards down and explore what else is there.
The general process is a guided eye motion interval, followed by a reflective interval to focus on the emotions of the event and the feelings in the body. The reflective interval discusses the emotions and physiological feelings that came up during the eye movement intervals. I had never associated my emotions with my body before this modality and found it difficult initially. It took me at least 30 seconds to identify the emotion and where it was in my body. If it takes you minutes, it is ok. It will get easier with practice.
Accessing new emotions and reflecting on how those emotions are felt in the body can create a new perspective. A new perspective about the impact trauma has on you allows you to heal it in a new way.
Will This Modern Method Work for Me?
EMDR is a popular modern method to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or, more generally, trauma.
PTSD can come from all sorts of traumatic events and not just the traditional cases of combat and war. I am so grateful for how far mental health fronts have come in the past 10 years, as this transition was another turning point for me. Depression was talked about a lot in the early 2000’s, almost too much, like a trend, and did not have the same tools for healing trauma. No one was talking about trauma and PTSD. Sometimes, it feels like “Pick your doctor, pick your disease.” But I decided to give it away, and I am glad I did.
The EMDR process is an especially useful method for recovering from PTSD or CPTSD.
Have you had success with EMDR, please share with us in the comments.
How to Identify if You Have Trauma.
Find a trained therapist who will assess your situation and circumstances to identify if EMDR is the right modality to use.
How to Tell if a Therapist is Certified in EMDR?
EMDR International Agency is the certifying agency that sets the standards for training and certification of the EMDR process. Their website has a section to search specifically for EMDR-certified therapists. Therapists will also list EMDR as one of their specialties, along with phrases like trauma care or trauma recovery in their bios.
Therapists use many ways of assessing mental health, but one way is reviewing a checklist of common attributes for PTSD with my therapist. These are some behavioral and situation identifiers that therapists can work with as guidelines for assessing behavior patterns at play. Once I could see the identifiers of PTSD, I was open to implementing this new process. An EMDR-certified therapist can help you do the same.
What is PTSD or CPTSD?
PTSD is a spectrum, as with anything else that is human. Like colors, there are varying degrees and intensities in nearly anything a human can do. A popular topic at the moment is Complex PTSD (CPTSD). This is an additional trauma category that has evolved to cover people who have survived long periods of recurring trauma. This would be someone who has survived years of repeated incidents of abuse or torture.
Remember that abuse can be more than sexual or physical assault. There is also emotional and mental abuse. Anything that targets emotions, like being told you are ugly, dumb, or incapable, is a type of abuse.
You can find more in-depth descriptions of PTSD or CPTSD on the National Health Services website, but the point is to say that EMDR will work for CPTSD as well.
What was Not the Best About EMDR?
To do EMDR, you do have to recount the traumatic events, and with CPTSD, this will mean recounting multiple events. The therapist will take note of what the events are and ask where you would like to start. This can be uncomfortable and exhausting, but I have not found a trauma therapy that gets around feeling the emotions.
To mitigate the impacts of having to “feel the feels,” consider the bonus tip at the bottom of our post, “The Unexpected Value You Will Gain From Therapy,” for things to consider when scheduling appointments and “Finding a Good Fit, Behaviors to Avoid in a Therapist” as behavior 3 was specifically with EMDR work.
How This Modern Method Might Fall Short.
Modern modalities of talk therapy and EMDR can provide a lot of value. However, EMDR might fall a little short with suppressed and repressed memories. EMDR has the potential to start unlocking these areas, but with the focus being on an image of the traumatic event, there might still be too much in the conscious mind to get to body-stored memories.
Regardless, I would still recommend people start with the modern modalities to build a trauma care foundation. For many people, this will be the easiest and safest way to start with a supportive environment for identifying and talking about emotions. Limits or not, I would not have been as successful with some of the mystical modalities without this foundation. Modern methods of therapy gave me tools to navigate deeper resolution safely.
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