Sometimes in EMDR therapy we will know immediately what memories need to be reprocessed; and other times it will take a little more time to identify what specific memories link to our present symptoms.
The following excerpts are from Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro:
“Ben is a successful businessman. Why is he hit with anxiety whenever he has to make a presentation?
“Here’s how he described it: “As long as I can remember, I’ve had anxiety about doing any performance in front of a group of people. My palms sweat, my voice becomes unpredictable, my heart beats fast and I have thoughts like, ‘I’m an idiot. I can’t do this. Everyone will hate me.’ It sometimes felt as though my life was at risk. Sounds ridiculous, but it was so true. As I went through school, there were many times in the normal course of events when I had to make public presentations. In my professional career the same thing happened. I always made it through these events, but not “happily. In fact, I suffered before and after every event, and tediously went over every detail with my loved ones, which, as you might imagine, did not delight them. No matter what I tried, nothing seemed to fix this problem. I tried many types of therapy. Sometimes it seemed a little better, but it always came roaring back.”
“Ben entered into EMDR therapy and used a variety of procedures that we’ll learn in this book to identify the source of his problem and change his reactions. Here’s what he discovered: “It turns out the cause was something that happened to me when I was no more than 3½ years old. I was walking with my grandfather on his farm in western North Carolina. My memory here is as if I was looking up, like a very small child. I don’t remember chattering away to my grandfather, but if family stories can be trusted, I probably was. We met a strange man on the road. He was old, bent, angry looking, with very hairy nostrils. He said to my grandfather in his mountain drawl, ‘Well, howdy, if I had a youn-gun’ talked as much as that un, I’d drown “him in the creek.’ I slipped behind my grandfather’s denim-covered leg, peered up the man’s nostrils and shut up. I knew that unwanted kittens were in fact ‘drowned in the creek.’ It did not seem safe to chatter in front of strangers.”
“So, this child’s moment of terror set the groundwork for his problem. The memory became stored in his brain and set him up for failure: “I did my first book report in third grade in front of my beloved Ms. Kneenor, a young, pretty, first-year teacher. I loved Ms. Kneenor, and was very proud of the fact that my book report was three pages long. I had worked very hard on it. I had also developed a slight stutter, which lasted all of about six months before leaving as mysteriously as it began. My parents had handled this pretty well, and I wasn’t aware of being self-conscious about it. I had daydreams of Ms. K praising me and telling the class what a great report I had done. Instead, Ms. K stayed in the back of the room in out-of-control laughter during my whole report. As I shuffled through my report, the stutter getting worse as I went, I thought, ‘I’m an idiot.’ Then two years later I was recruited at the last minute to do a part in a school play. I was in the middle of the first act when I forgot my “lines. I stood in the middle of the stage stock-still. I thought, ‘Everyone will hate me. I have ruined the play. I’m an idiot.’”
“Notice that Ben had these same thoughts going through his mind 40 years later when he needed to make a presentation at work: “I’m an idiot. I can’t do this. Everyone will hate me.” He had no idea before “EMDR therapy why he was feeling and thinking that way. He did not have a visual image of his grandfather’s farm, or the book report, or the school play—he just had the feelings and thoughts that went along with it. This was an automatic response to an external “trigger,” just as much as “Roses are red” causes “Violets are blue.”
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“Why does Stacey have an almost constant feeling of dread, fears of abandonment and an eating disorder? Strangest of all, she has repeated images of the color red and a candle. It makes no sense to her, but it has been going on for as long as she can remember.
“Stacey tried one therapist after another for years. There are more than 100 different kinds of therapy, and each therapist brings a personal perspective, which also changes the way the treatment is applied. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to find the right treatment—or the right therapist. Also, clinical situations can be complicated, because sometimes a childhood event is so disturbing that it can completely overwhelm the brain’s natural ability to process it, and it’s either not stored at all or becomes completely cut off so the person can’t remember it. That was one of Stacey’s problems. After years of therapy with little change in symptoms, she arrived at a therapist who tried a variety of avenues and also got no results. Since Stacey had no idea where the problems “came from, and had abandonment issues, intimacy problems, eating difficulties, panic and anxiety, her clinician said to her, “It really sounds like you have been sexually abused.” In addition, because she had recurrent images of the color red and a candle, he suggested that maybe it was ritual abuse because those images would fit right into satanic worship ceremonies. As you can imagine, that made her anxiety even worse. So for two years, they probed her life story, trying without success to find memories of ritual abuse.
“Since she was still suffering, Stacey tried another therapist where she learned about EMDR. Because she didn’t have recall of anything she consciously felt was connected to the feelings of dread, anxiety, fears of abandonment and her eating disorder, the therapist targeted the symptoms that could most directly lead to the underlying memory: the image of the color red and a candle. After the appropriate preparation, during the memory processing procedures, images from her childhood emerged and she saw herself at about 5 years old. It was her birthday. Her daddy gave her a scented candle for her room and then they went off in the car to her birthday luncheon. As they are driving along singing together, a car runs a stoplight and crashes into them, killing her father. So if her father died next to her on the way to her birthday luncheon, the symptoms become explainable. As you can see, from this you could easily develop eating problems, abandonment issues and persistent anxiety.
“But sometimes memories can be misleading, because they can simply be images that conform to the feelings we have. For instance, children can believe that something bad happened to them because they heard a story or saw something on television. Think of all the children who develop nightmares after watching frightening movies. Was Stacey really in the car when her father was killed? Stacey knew that her father had died in a car accident but she’d had no memory of being with him. You don’t know unless you get confirmation “She called up her mother and asked, “Mom, is it true? Was I with Dad when he died?” Her mother said, “Well, yes dear, you were, but we thought you didn’t want to talk about it because you never mentioned it.” So even though Stacey had a very loving mother who wanted to protect her and no direct memory of her father’s death, she had years of symptoms that seemed totally irrational. Now they made sense. And more important, they disappeared after the memory was processed.”
To read more about EMDR click here.
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