I’m an EMDR Convert

Call me weird but my niche is trauma. Over the last 25 years I have gotten really good at hearing, discussing all kinds of awful stories from clients. I can hold these stories, and at the end of the day, I go home and live my life as if some spacey force field surrounds me from absorbing the pain into my own heart. Recently however, I decided that I could not be a trauma therapist if I did not know anything about EMDR therapy. The most I remembered from the first time I heard about it (in around 1993) was about watching a pencil eraser go back and forth and somehow people felt better afterwards. It seemed a little like voodoo to me. But after the last 3 months of training, I decided that it’s more like magic.

Real magic, like having my own wand in Diagon Alley with Harry Potter and friends and knowing all the right spells and potions at my disposal. Okay let me qualify this: I am a total newbie. I literally just finished the second weekend at the Maigberger Institute in Boulder, Colorado, with the amazing Barb Maiberger. Barb teaches four groups per month, then follows them up with online meeting consultations. I have had a private practice for a few years and many of my established clients were psyched to try this modality with me and I have been able to witness some amazing things in a short period of time. So before I say more – just what the heck is EMDR therapy, you ask? Well, I am here to tell you, since one of the assignments is to draft an explanation for my clients.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy is a modality that can be used with adults, teens and young children. It has been extensively researched and shown to reduce symptoms associated with most kinds of traumas and generally disturbing events and emotions. There are 8 phases that will take place as the client is ready for them.

The treatment will use one or more of the following types of Bilateral/Dual Attention Processing stimulation (BLS). This keeps the client and therapist in the past and the present at the same time: Each client can choose what they prefer: Eye movement by following an object, hand buzzers, tone through headphones, tapping by the therapist or self-tapping.

EMDR Therapy does not erase memories, it merely takes the emotional connection away from an event so that a person can recall and discuss the events without distress or disturbance. Research has also shown that the brain continues to re-process even after the session and well into the future. Clients may experience dreams, flashbacks, emotions and other sensations following the treatments especially after the trauma work begins. This is normal as it shows that your nervous system is doing its work.

Many of you may have heard that in June 2019 the creator of EMDR, Francine Shapiro, passed away at the age of 71. She discovered the properties of her theory quite by accident, as many good ideas come along, and being open to something that the Universe was trying to tell her. As a graduate student in Psychology, she followed up with good old-fashioned inquiry and research and started nothing short of a revolution. People with long term traumatic symptoms – war veterans, crime victims, people with chronic pain got relief! Even after years of traditional therapies, within a few sessions, they were able to think about or talk about their traumas without feeling as though it was happening all over again. Like I said: Magic.

Ok, magic and science. One image that came up in my mind when watching my first demonstration on Day One was the idea of hypnosis. In the movies, we always see some Victorian doctor in a gray suit with a curly mustache swing a big, gold, pocket watch in front of someone’s face until they become sleepy. In this state, the doctor is able to access memories, or implant some suggestion that later comes out unknowingly as a behavior the doctor wanted the patient to complete. Okay, that is pretty creepy and not what the purpose of any legitimate therapy is. But the bilateral stimulation has definitely been known for a while as a powerful method for brain stimulation. Plenty of new science on the brain is out there and practitioners, writers, researchers are clamoring to have the next breakthrough: like plugging our heads into a screen and making images appear. I’m not so sure that is a world I am interested in, as my reality, anyway. I’ll take it as science fiction instead.

I am a convert now. I don’t hear all the stories as much in sessions. I find myself taking deep breaths with my clients, nodding, and saying “go with that,” a lot while observing waves of emotion in my clients through their tears, twitches and relaxation responses. They end their sessions looking like they just came out of a nice dream, stretching and smiling, yet they were fully awake in the room the whole time. I tried it while in training, as we have to do on one another, and discovered that a number of things that used to get me going on an angry rant are no longer bothering me. It is a very peaceful feeling, to be able to let it go. I have studied for 25 years to do play therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Solution Focused Therapy, art therapy, and this is becoming my go-to and I don’t have to give up any of the above! I hope to keep going to get certified, which will take a couple years to do, so until then I will keep practicing, training, and consulting. Advice? Interested therapists should find an EMDRIA approved training, and don't cheap out on this one. There is too much to learn in what might look like a bargain. Potential clients: always look up where your therapist got their training, just in case they did cheap out! 

Locker Room "banter"

I was encouraged to say more about this topic after posting online about how to address “locker room banter”. Politics aside, this is what the country has spent a week discussing:

Donald Trump: You know and I moved on her actually. You know she was down on Palm Beach.

Unknown: She used to be great. She’s still very beautiful.

Trump: I moved on her and I failed. I’ll admit it. I did try and f*** her. She was married.

Unknown: That’s huge news.

Trump. No, no, Nancy. This was— And I moved on her very heavily in fact. I took her out furniture shopping. She wanted to get some furniture. I said I’ll show you where they have some nice furniture. I took her out furniture. I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married. Then all of a sudden I see her, she’s now got the big, phony tits and everything. She’s totally changed her look.

[The men spot Arianne Zucker waiting for them outside the bus]

Bush: Sheesh, your girl’s hot as shit. In the purple.

Trump: Whoa! Yes! Whoa!

Unknown: Yes! The Donald has scored. Whoa, my man!

Trump: Look at you. You are a pussy.

[crosstalk as the bus doors open and close - Trump is still on the bus]

Trump: Maybe it’s a different one.

Bush: It better not be the publicist. No, it’s her. It’s —

Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful - I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab them by the pu**y. You can do anything.

This exchange was recorded in 2005. People have been horrified for the most part, but some people don’t think it’s a big deal. Mr. Trump disregards it as “locker room banter” meaning this is how guys talk when they’re alone.  They brag about grabbing women, they move on women “like a bitch, and try to fuck them.”  Perhaps some men do talk this way… hopefully only a few compared to the majority of the population. It is not the norm, it is by definition, deviant behavior.

Athletes in locker rooms are expressing horror. Women with sons are expressing horror, young sons are expressing horror. Women, girls, are sharing stories of daily sexual assaults, the kind that is considered “minor” and “not reportable.” In passing, on the crowded street, or bus, elevator, party. Since age 9, 12, 15… and continuing until they became “too old” or “fat” to be bothered with. But for the most part, they want to know how to make this stop.

One of the things I do in my profession is train on the topic of “Primary Perpetration Prevention.” There is also secondary and Tertiary prevention but my focus right now is primary – preventing abuse, mainly sexual, from ever taking place. And yes, we start when humans are small and impressionable. Why? Because research tells us that adults who sexually abuse began doing it as children and/or teens. And they start by doing it to other children because there is a difference in power, strength, age or ability. However, no-one did any research on the sexual abuse of children by children earlier than the mid 1980s – adults were convinced that children just did not have sexuality let alone a proclivity to abuse, given the right circumstances. A team of psychologists at the Kempe Center in Denver developed a program in the mid 1990s to work with adolescent offenders with largely positive results. Young minds can learn three important skills: Communication, Empathy and Accountability. I was trained to be a trainer on these topics by one of the authors, Gail Ryan, MA, in 2009 who is now retired. I want to carry on her legacy.

Very basically – communication is the ability to send and receive messages. Ideally they learn to do this is a healthy family setting. Not all kids grow up in nurturing and safe homes. They learn to keep secrets.

Empathy is the ability to read and understand the emotions of other people (or even animals). Children without empathy will not understand when they have hurt someone’s feelings, or identify someone’s feelings.

Accountability is the accurate attribution of wrongdoing. If you make a mistake, own it and make amends. There is a consequence to a behavior vs getting away with it.

This morning I posted this on Facebook, my private personal page:

If you are ever in a locker room, and you hear somebody talking about grabbing women (etc) and another person laughing along here's what you could say to make a difference:
"I heard you say that you grabbed a woman etc. and I feel very uncomfortable and/or angry and I'm sure that woman was uncomfortable and/or angry; What you were describing is abusive and illegal and it needs to stop."
#notokay

The structure of the response is what I teach adults to use. First – communicate that you HEARD it and or SAW it with your own ears and eyes. Often someone who is offending and keeping secrets will “gaslight” you with, “I didn’t do that/say that, you saw wrong, it wasn’t me.” No, stand firm. You know what you heard and saw.

Then you talk about your feelings and or the feelings of the person who is being harmed – uncomfortable, hurt, mad, in pain, point out tears and sadness if it is present. They need to be helped to identify emotions and hopefully feel them. This is obviously much easier with young people.

Accountability can simply be a prohibition. Research also tells us that young people do not know which behaviors are illegal. Telling someone their behavior is illegal can make it end right there. Many of us grew up in a family where getting a pinch on the bottom is cute and funny. But most of us who don’t like it were able to say, “I don’t like that,” and it stops. Because when you respect the body and wishes of another, that’s what you do. So the final part of the above intervention tells the people to stop.

I am not going to tell you that this is easy to do. What if you are at a party and you witness someone being harmed? You are in a dangerous situation, no doubt. However, a room full of bystanders is just as culpable as the perpetrator. You must intervene or get help. Someone I know said saying these things could cost them in their individual sub-cultures (work?). I suggested these were people they were better off without. Humans can be held to a higher standard and should be. Women are your mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, wives. We deserve to be safe, to walk down the street feeling no leery eyes on us, no rude comments (even if they try to convince us they are compliments), no hands grabbing us, from a friend or a stranger. Men can help to make this kind of world a reality by speaking up routinely, until it doesn’t feel scary. Practice makes perfect.

My next training is through Foster Source – a foster parent support organization. The training is in Greeley, CO on November 19 from 9-11:30. There is a lot more than the above but even if just the above can make a difference, please use it.