Lion Counseling Podcast

To help bring to life why EMDR therapy works, in a moment I'll use a couple case examples. Please know that these are not actual clients, but rather fictional characters that represent the kinds of clients I so often see in my practice. If their names or situations resemble someone real, please know that this is purely coincidental. Let's turn to the first example. Example, a military veteran we'll call Bob.

Bob, now in his early forties, combat in Afghanistan. While he was over there, he experienced not only the pervasive sense of being on edge and unsafe, but the intense helplessness and fear of being attacked unexpectedly and watching his buddies die in his arms. Through no fault of his own, the intensity of these experiences overwhelmed his brain's ability to cope and they became frozen. Like that tiger in the cave. And today, every time the tiger gets poked, every time a memory wakes up, Bob re experiences it almost as if it were happening again.

His heart races. His breathing changes. His body fills with adrenaline. And he feels helpless, like he's actually going to die. The rational part of him knows that his tour of duty is over, but his brain isn't rational right now.

It's in survival mode, and his body is responding accordingly. After coming back from the war, Bob learned that a few things kept the tiger away. Becoming emotionally numb helped. The only problem is that while it helped him escape the pain, it also made him miss out on the good things in life. The things that make life worth living.

Playing with his kids, enjoying the company of his wife, enjoying the beauty of nature. Numbness has a cost. He also discovered that drugs and alcohol kept the tiger from waking up. In fact, they worked pretty well. They gave him relief from the physical and emotional pain, and actually helped him feel normal for a while.

But of course, we we know that addiction takes its toll as well. That painful cycle of lying, hiding, shame and isolation that impacts the whole family. And finally, Bob could rely on his anger. Like a devoted bodyguard, his anger would spring into action anytime the old painful feelings from his past started to resurface. Anger would come to the rescue, squashing these emotions, filling him with adrenaline and power.

Sure, anger could get him in trouble, but it sure felt better than being frozen in helplessness, shame, and fear. If you asked Bob about his anger, he'd tell you that he was often walking on the edge, just a moment away from not only anger, but immediate and violent rage. He learned this about himself three months after he got back home. He was driving to a job interview when another vehicle cut him off in traffic. Bob felt a surge of adrenaline course through his body and an immediate desire to fight back, a deep, primal impulse to make that driver pay.

With his knuckles turning white as he clutched the steering wheel, Bob tailed the perceived offender, bumper to bumper, for miles. When the light turned red, as if in a trance, he found himself getting out of his car, walking over to the vehicle, and grabbing the driver through his open window. He slammed the driver's head against the steering wheel three times before he tossed him inside and and realized that this big threat was actually a thin, rather small teenage boy. Probably just fresh out of driver's training. This wasn't like the true Bob, the family man who prided himself on service, sacrifice, and self control.

And yet here he was. After an arrest, court, and mandatory anger management classes, Bob was still only a moment away from doing it again. Why is this? Well, according to the AIP system understanding of the brain, Bob's behavior makes perfect sense. Actually, it's what you might expect from someone with a traumatized brain who's been through what he went through.

Remember, his feelings of intense danger and helplessness from combat became frozen in his brain. His traumatic memories had been dysfunctionally stored, cut off from the adaptive information he needed to heal. Adaptive felt truths like, I'm safe now, or I have choices now, or it's over. To Bob, these truthful statements would sound nice, but without EMDR, they would never really feel true. They were just wishful thinking.

The trouble with post traumatic stress is that the truth can't quite get from the head to the heart. For those of you who have trouble seeing yourself in Bob, let me give you one more example that might hit closer to home. If you're married or have been in a serious relationship, maybe this will be easier to relate to. After a long day of work, John walks through the front door, grabs a beer, and relaxes on the couch to watch TV. His wife, Sarah, had come home just a few minutes earlier and started washing the large pile of dishes in the sink.

The minutes passed by with John silently watching TV and Susan noisily scrubbing away until finally, she breaks the silence saying, I thought you were gonna do the dishes last night. And so it begins. Another argument. As usual, it's unproductive. Tempers are raised, hurtful things are said, and it ends as he storms off and disappears to the basement.

Nothing is resolved, and both John and Sarah are left feeling hurt, lonely, and misunderstood. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that it's just not about the dishes. It rarely is. It's really about how the situation with the dishes triggered John and Susan back to their old hurts and insecurities. It's about how John not doing the dishes stirred up Susan's insecurity of not being important, and how the way Susan brought up the subject stirred up John's old insecurity of not being good enough.

From an AIP perspective, the roots of these kinds of insecurities go back to old hurts often from childhood. Even with good parents and a pretty good upbringing, no one grows up emotionally unscathed. Sticks and stones can break our bones, but words words can, in fact, hurt us, planting seeds of doubt and insecurity that grow with time. The old playground saying implies that sticks and stones can truly hurt us because unlike emotional hurts, sticks and stones can inflict real bodily harm. But we now know that emotional wounds can hurt our bodies as well.

Remember the ACE study? Emotional wounds are just more hidden because they're located in a part of the body no one can see, the brain. Post traumatic stress might be easier to relate to if we could see it, like a bruise, a broken bone, or that unhealed cut we spoke of earlier. But since the wound is in the brain, it's more difficult to recognize and understand. And too many people, including many doctors, will dismiss trauma saying, it's all in your head, or there's nothing physically wrong with you.

If when they said this, they actually meant it's all in your head because there's something very real happening in your brain, that might be helpful. Unfortunately, this attitude instead conveys that someone made it all up, or maybe needs to simply toughen up and get over it. With emotional trauma, it's not that simple. With this reality in mind, it's no surprise that couples and families often drag up the past. Events that have supposedly been forgiven resurface with a vengeance, almost as if they were happening all over again.

If John and Sarah were in my office, I might ask them how things would be different if their deepest insecurities were washed away. If deep inside, John actually felt good enough and Susan actually felt important. For many couples, this change would transform their relationships from the inside out. They'd actually be able to just argue about the dishes, and it wouldn't even be much of an argument. They'd be able to deal with what's actually in front of them and have a proportional emotional response without being overwhelmed by a flood of past pain.

If they were in my office, I would explain all this to them and recommend that they each receive individual EMDR therapy to work through their old hurts so they can come back together and do more meaningful couples work. I would agree with them that, of course, it's good to learn tools and manage their emotions. However, I'd emphasize that it's even better to heal the root cause, and that EMDR therapy could help them do that. If you or someone you love wants freedom from those old hurts, EMDR therapy could be the ticket. But I know that doing something new can stir up anxiety, especially something like therapy.

And so to take all the mystery out of the process, I'll now be going over the nuts and bolts of what EMDR therapy actually looks like.