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EMDR Trauma Therapy Saved my Life

I felt the shock of ice cold kitchen tile against my tear-streaked cheek. I laid there sobbing and screaming, the gut wrenching birth of death, the pull on my body and in my throat to capitulate to the world that my daughter died and to seemingly physically extract part of her from me now. I rocked myself upright, dizzy and spent. I feel a dog licking my face, another lying in the corner suffering her own grief. Even the dog lost weight as quickly as I drained myself of hunger, of vomit induced by panic attacks and bad dreams of Taylor dying over and over and over for two years. Now, I choose not to think of the two years before EMDR trauma therapy. I can’t believe I made it through the worst a mother can bear.

After almost 7 years after Taylor died by suicide, I’ve regained weight and so has the dog. Two years of talk therapy within the constructs of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) didn’t make a dent in my guilt. In fact, it’s been proven to worsen PTSD. CBT just couldn’t get past the amygdala’s screaming sirens of regret and blame. The therapy allows for new neuropathways that physically curb invasive thoughts and memories. Hypnosis, Reiki, meditation, medication, riding my bike, hiking, writing; all of my coping mechanisms that brought me to healing did not surpass my stuck brain but proved vital after trauma therapy.

EMDR trauma therapy, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing addresses PTSD, complicated grief, and trauma.  I couldn’t see that at the end of EMDR, I would not incriminate myself. EMDR allowed for my limbic system to disengage from the powerful fight or flight reactions and allow for my brain to process my guilt and end my self-destructive nosedive. It moves glucose from the limbic brain to the thinking brain, the pre-frontal cortex that is fed by the breath and glucose.

EMDR mimics REM, rapid eye movement that we experience in sleep. That process of bilateral stimulation allows the brain to shuffle through the day, the pain, the fear, to categorize memories, and to grow and repair cellular tissue which can’t happen when you’re stressed. The therapy allowed for me to remove the limiting belief that I was solely responsible for my daughter having taken her own life.

A single trauma like this one can be managed in a shorter length of time than traditional therapy. The 90 minute sessions utilize easy, non-threatening bars of light or as is my preference, tiny paddles that gently vibrate in the palms of the hand, left and right and back again to mimic rapid eye movement, creating bilateral stimulation. This back and forth is why walking in nature decreases limbic response by half! The session is precision and results-oriented to identify and address the trauma, replace the limited belief with a positive image or idea, then calm the brain and body by finding and utilizing a safe place in the mind. This technique uses the familiar guided mediation method found on any meditation app. For people who have experienced abuse, more than one event, or prolonged trauma, more sessions are required but far fewer than traditional cognitive therapy sessions, which is another reason it is recognized as one of the effective PTSD therapies for veterans. CBT heightens trauma response, aggravates PTSD to a new level, and rarely helps the core issue as discussed.

EMDR allowed for me to incorporate the myriad of healing behaviors, cognitive brain training, relaxation, and growth I needed to navigate life on new terms. Trauma therapy allowed for me to incorporate the healing processes and healthy behaviors I needed to make new life experiences. I have experienced no negative side effects, decreased depression, and those haunting bad dreams and sleepless nights have ceased. It is not a cure for grief. Grieving is a necessary process. Trauma is not. Grieving and the benefits of actively healing guide us to understand our pain in the book The Grieving Brain: The Surprising Science of How We Learn from Love and Loss by Dr. Mary Frances O’Connor.

I train my brain with the same safe place meditation I used in EMDR to experience the joys around me, to choose to laugh and to have fun and to bathe in the joys of nature in the present moment. I remind myself not to avoid the pain of missing my daughter but to steer clear of the judgment of it all. We hold ourselves responsible to ourselves and we can pay attention to the souls who are living among us and the body, mind, and spirit that we have been blessed with for this short time if we can teach ourselves to trust the power of the physical body, brain, and how it all works together in life.