"EMDR therapy finally helped me process my trauma"

It’s 2016, and I have spent the last 365 days vomiting for a reason not yet determined. Physical tests reveal no ailments, which means it’s ‘all in my head’ (which believe me, I’ve been told). But trauma takes over your whole body – and blood tests, anti-sickness tablets and physical examinations provide no relief.

Sitting at my desk one morning, at the age of 20, I just started to cry. I was in my first ‘proper’ job, had a long-term boyfriend and a stable home life, great friends – and I just cried. For days. Days became months, and tears became sickness: it was like my whole body was crying; expelling all the junk it needed rid of.

I had no idea that what I was experiencing was complex post-traumatic stress disorder in its full, relentless force – until a friend recommended their therapist to me and the course of my life took an important turn.

As soon as I sat in the armchair in my psychotherapist’s cosy home office (no, I didn’t lie down on a sofa), she seemed to know exactly what was ‘wrong’ with me. We spoke a lot about post-traumatic stress and what that meant, and my therapist recommended an indefinite course of EMDR therapy combined with Internal Family Systems to help me recover. I attended once a week for five months, and I haven’t been the same since.

What constitutes as ‘traumatic’?

Before I go on, I want to mention that I fundamentally believe that all of us experience something traumatic in our lives, and we all have life experiences which go on to affect us. It might not be a glaring event that you can pinpoint as an obvious trigger, but we all experience life-changing events, from grief and loss, to divorce, childbirth and medical concerns.

According to Jordan Vyas-Lee, psychotherapist, EMDR therapist and co-founder of leading mental healthcare clinic, Kove, "the meaning of trauma in a psychotherapeutic context is rightly broad.

"Physically dangerous, life threatening, or acutely dehumanising experiences that cause deep destabilisation in the nervous system are more understood and accepted by society at large and are often the experiences that result in what we know as PTSD."

Vyas-Lee goes on to explain however, that "almost anybody can benefit from EMDR," because we all carry our past experiences with us in both our minds and our bodies – particularly within our nervous systems – but equally that the "most pressing need for EMDR is in those individuals who are experiencing high distress levels, or are no longer coping".

This point is an important one in noting the difference between trauma and stress – both of which can be damaging to the nervous system, but are also fundamentally different. Trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk describes this key difference in his writings as that stress stops when the event stops – trauma doesn't. You attend the appointment or receive the results you've been worried about and then you get on with your life: this is stress. In cases of trauma, it's carried with you on a longer-term basis and goes on to effect your behaviour and perception of the world.

What is EMDR therapy?

EMDR – Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing – is a form of psychotherapy used to treat trauma. When we experience something traumatic, our memory function temporarily stops working properly, essentially to enable us to survive it before we then manage the emotions around it when we are safe. Sometimes, this process doesn’t quite work as it should.

Usually, as we sleep (or engage in activity such as adaptive conversation with others about the events we’ve experienced) our memories are processed and filed away, moving from the short-term memory to the long-term memory, rarely to be thought of again unless we deliberately recall them. Post-traumatic stress occurs when memories become stuck in the short-term memory – in the brain neurologically, and in the body, stored as emotional and physical memory. These memories are easily recalled – ‘triggered’ – and still painful: our brains can’t comprehend the difference between then and now. The memories are implicitly stored and control much of our subconscious behaviour and choices, even in the absence of full PTSD reliving experiences.

The purpose of EMDR is to move unprocessed traumatic experiences from the short-term memory to the long-term memory across the whole mind-body system, and desensitise us to them, essentially taking their power away.

Leila Steeds, EMDR Therapist at Harley Therapy, explains that "there is no sense of time or perspective in trauma, the body experiences it as if it is happening now. EMDR is very different to talking and insight-based therapies as it actually physically targets the brain and nervous system. It is a focused and time-efficient intervention which can make a huge difference to survivors of single episode, such as a sexual assault, and complex trauma."

How can I access EMDR therapy?

I hadn’t heard of EMDR therapy before my private psychotherapist recommended it for me, and I certainly wouldn’t have known to seek it out. Many people ask about PTSD treatment now that I am in recovery, and I’ve only ever met one other person who knew of and had experienced EMDR for herself.

It was never mentioned when I visited the GP in crisis, and I took on a stint of talking therapy and a (very) short experience – and allergic reaction – with medication before I found EMDR. It doesn’t seem to be a regular port of call within the NHS and according to Steeds "isn’t widely available, and it is very difficult to find low cost EMDR in this country".

If you’re interested in exploring EMDR, mention it to your GP – but you may have to pursue private therapy, which isn’t doable for everyone. Unfortunately, specialist mental health care is still just too difficult to access for many. Similarly, it's important to note that EMDR is not a fix-all 'cure' for PTSD, and may not work for everybody - just like any other psychological treatment.

How does EMDR therapy work?

When my therapist first explained EMDR to me, I thought I was going to be hypnotised. At this point, I was happy to try anything, but I was certainly curious about this particular approach. I was warned before treatment started that it would involve delving into traumatic experiences and ultimately reliving them to process them correctly this time around, and that this could mean feeling physical sensations, emotions and even physical injuries from the original traumas presenting themselves again.

I wasn’t hypnotised. Quite the opposite: I was entirely conscious to feel every single thing that came up. My therapist would sit directly in front of me – quite close – and position her hand upright in front of my face. She would move her hand from left to right, and I would follow her hand with my eyes. During this process she would ask me to think about particular memories or sometimes just see what came up for me, and follow it wherever it wanted to take me mentally. This process is designed to simulate our own internal systems for processing information – usually while we are asleep.

In terms of how this works within the mind and body, Vyas-Lee explains that "EMDR activates the nervous system at a deep emotional level. A therapist starts by asking their patient to recall old traumatic events vividly in the mind’s eye. Going back to key moments that wired the nervous system dysfunctionally. The EMDR journey allows the patient to reprocess these memories. Ultimately coming to look at deep-seated events through the lens of today, and in the process rewiring the nervous system in a more functional way."

Steeds shares how this works in the brain, revealing that "by connecting the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain, and the amygdala, the feeling part of the brain, we can access the traumatic memory with one foot in the past and one in the present. We go in and out of the memory, desensitising the client to the trauma. Once it has been processed, the memory is stored in a part of the brain, the hippocampus, where there is a sense of time and perspective, so the memory still exists but loses its traumatic charge."

For those of us who, like me, receive the right treatment at the right time, the outcomes can be life changing. It’s been seven years since I started EMDR therapy and – with all the gratitude in my heart – it was the beginning of the end. Learning to live post-trauma will require more strength than you know that you have, but you do. And there is beautiful, fulfilling life on the other side.

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