34 - EMDR - EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING - WHAT IS IT AND HOW CAN IT HELP YOU?

Hi, I'm Dr. Carol Darca, author, psychologist and founder of Reconnect Trauma Treatment center in Los Angeles. Do you know anything about emdr? And would you like to know more? If you've heard the news this week, Prince Harry from England talked about mental health and the importance of going to therapy and how he's been receiving EMDR therapy to deal with his stress and with his trauma. It always makes me feel good when I hear celebrities talk about the importance of reaching out for help and asking for therapy and getting the right support that they need. So let's talk about emdr, an evidence based trauma treatment. And the reason why I talk about that is one main reason is because we had reconnected to EMDR as well. And I've been trained in that modality for about 20 years. It was originally founded by Francine Shapiro in 1988 in a very unusual way. When she was walking, I think in a forest or on a hiking trip, she felt quite, quite upset about something and she was remembering the memories and she found herself moving her eyes from right to left, like, kind of like that. And then she realized the movement of the eyes actually reduced the anxiety and the upset that she was feeling. And after that she put that into practice and found that that actually holding onto the negative memory or the negative feelings and using at the same time eye movements or later on became bilateral movements, which I will tell you about, proved to be actually effective in reducing the traumatic feelings or the overall activation in the nervous system. So then became quite well known in the whole art world. It's practiced everywhere. You can use EMDR for trauma, for memories, for anxiety, for depression, for chronic pain, for even maybe self judgments or negative belief systems, things that actually really sort of get stuck in your brain and that by talking you're not able to really access them, or you're able to access them, but you're not really able to process them. So when we just talk about trauma or really upsetting, stressful situations, we, we might feel a little bit of a relief, but it doesn't necessarily help us to actually resolve the issue or often in fact can make us feel worse, depending on how severe the trauma experience was. So EMDR does something where that when you move your eyes from right to left, you're actually accessing your emotional brain on the right side of your, the half of the brain. And that helps to bring the feelings up to the surface while you're talking about it and it starts really decreasing the intensity of it. So you can find all of that information more and more if you read about emdr. But I really wanted to talk about it because it's important to understand also how to be careful with it and that so that you don't find yourself overdoing it or doing it in a wrong way. The good news is there are a lot of people who are trained in emdr, especially in the United States, but again internationally as well. But it's important that an EMDR therapist really understands trauma overall. So first of all, be careful. We're in a high technology period of our lives where you can just Google anything, YouTube anything, and find how to do EMDR. I do not recommend that you do EMDR on your own unless you are maybe a seasoned therapist yourself and or you had enough experience having done EMDR that having received the MDR and now you have sort of a sense of how to do it, but even then, still not my recommendation. So the part that you really want to be careful is before you jump into a traumatic memory, you do not want to skip the initial stabilization phase. So what does that mean? That means before you can talk about something that's so painful, and that's probably something that you put aside or barely even remember, or when you remember, you feel a lot of emotions coming up or you really break apart, in fact, you need to go through a phase of finding ways to calm your nervous system down. So your therapist should know some techniques to teach you, such as breathing or grounding. EFT is another one. For instance, you've seen some of my videos when I talk about grounding and eft and there are a lot of other techniques that these techniques will help you first to calm your nervous system down and give you some sort of strength. Talking about emotional strength, we call this phase also resourcing. So you basically find resources in your life, outside and inside, that your mood starts getting a little bit better or your capacity to tolerate feelings gets better too, so that you're not jumping right away into a very painful memory. I know there's a myth and a belief that we actually heal if we really are able to say what happened to us in detail and maybe sometimes even over and over again in order to release the trauma, but that's actually not accurate. In the last 10 years or so, it's became much more obvious that smaller steps towards healing is much more efficient. Using the body as healing is also much more efficient. So now most therapists know that it's not just about talking and releasing things, but it's about really finding a ways to contain the emotion. So once you achieve the stabilization phase again with all the techniques, plus highly, highly recommending regular grounding and mindfulness. Then your therapist and you may decide if you are ready to target a specific memory. So don't, don't worry if you don't remember exactly what happened, because sometimes I get that question about, is it, will I be able to work on it? I just know that maybe I was abused, but I don't know who, or I don't know when, but I have the sense of it, or I have the maybe nightmares or, or physical sensations. Yes, you can. The goal is not for you to remember every detail. The goal is for you to be able to go through some of the memory or to go through some of the feelings, but without breaking apart and without dissociating, which means without really leaving your body. And also the goal is to be able to stay present in this moment, 2021, while you are talking about an incident that happened in the past. So if you're working on a traumatic incident that you had when you were 5 years old, your goal is not to relive it as if you are five years old today. So you never forget that you are right now still an adult. You find ways to feel grounded, feeling your body, become aware of where you are. And then your therapist helps you with, again, bilateral stimulation to maybe bring up the painful feelings or memories from the past. And there's a whole protocol. I'm not going to go into it. Your therapist hopefully is well trained and they will guide you. So it's very important that when you are going through the memory with emdr that you don't actually go out of a window of tolerance. What is window of tolerance? Window of tolerance is, is where you have certain emotions. I'm gonna actually show it this way. So this is sort of my window of tolerance. Means during the day I go up and down, right? I have feelings, I might get upset, I might get a little bit depressed. But overall, I go up and down in a normal way, meaning I can function. I can go to school, I can work, I can take care of my kids. Yes, of course I have emotions, but I can function and I can integrate information. I can understand things and my brain functions well. So if I have so much emotions all of a sudden during an EMDR processing and I find myself hyperventilating or crying so much that I don't even know where I am anymore, or I'm not even able to hear what my therapist is saying, that means that was too much. I really hope you watch this video before going for therapy. Because even sometimes, unfortunately, well intended therapists do not know that and they believe they have to push you. They were taught that cathartic experiences are actually necessary. And then maybe the more you cry, the more you can release things and. And the more you're healed. This is absolutely not accurate. So that I was giving you the extreme version of the going out of the window of tolerance. The other version of it is if you go down right on this thing of where you may become too depressed or flat or completely checked out, where you're going sort of on a frozen reaction, that also is a sign that you've gone too far. So again, if that happens, do not hesitate to stop the processing. Ask your therapist to stop if he or she is not aware of your situation and say, okay, that was too much for me. And then go back to your grounding and resourcing techniques that we talked about in the past. I mean, in, in the beginning of the video, like the eft, right? Again, watch the EFT video. Or there's also butterfly tappings that you can do where it sort of starts calming the nervous system down, like literally tapping yourself this way, a certain breathing or really, literally getting up and moving. And then when you feel like you're calming down, then you check again. Am I ready to continue today? And if you're not ready to continue today, please do not push yourself. Because pushing yourself, as I call it, the Nazi approach of like, let's get it done, is really not only not helpful, but you can find that could be re traumatizing. You want to leave the therapy session feeling like you've accomplished something. You can tolerate the feelings so that when you come back the next time you go into the second part of the trauma memory or the third part of the traumatic memory, so you don't want to jump in and feel so overwhelmed that you are in bed for days after that rather than actually feeling supported and processed. So this is my basic explanation for EMDR for you guys. And if you would like to know more, ask me questions below, I would be very happy to explain more. We are about 30 therapists, most of us trained in EMDR and trauma in general, and the somatic therapy where you'll be able to process these feelings, but not in a way that will feel overwhelming for you. And that's how the healing should happen in a gentle and slow and compassionate way. Thank you for watching again. Follow us@renectcenter.com on our website and our Instagram and Facebook. And remember, trauma equals disconnect. Healing equals reconnect. Stay connected.