After having researched and prepared for emdr for quite a while, I went into the session with my target incident in mind. This would be my first time meeting the counselor providing the service, as all of the prior assessments were done by the previous counselors. I felt at ease and we spoke briefly about where I was at. She told me that going over my assessments she felt good about moving forward if I was ready and I agreed.
We did speak briefly about my target incident, even though describing it is not required, it can be helpful. It’s a story that has been told so many times that I can rattle off a summary version without much emotion. I was 4 years old and got scared by the old black&white king kong movie and had a panic attack.
On this particular day, I avoided the non-emo summary version, because of course, the devil is in the details. On this particular telling, it finally occurred to me that the movie itself was actually only one of many contributing factors and probably not even the biggest.
It started out with disappointment. I was an only child at the time, not close to either of my parents, rarely had other kids around and spent a lot of time alone. I was told that we were going to my mom’s cousin’s house and she had 3 kids. Two of them were older than me, but there was one girl who was a little younger than me, and I was excited to have someone who might actually play with me. When we got to their house, there was no sign of the kids, and I was told that the youngest didn’t feel like having company and wanted to be alone in her room. The part that I had always sort of glossed over in the past was how personally I had taken it. I would give anything to have another kid to play with, how could she possibly prefer being alone to being with me? I just didn’t understand and of course assumed that it had to be something about me. Yes, at 4 years old I already thought that something was wrong with me and that other kids didn’t want me around.
So I was stuck with the grown ups as usual, but on top of that, they were watching the aforementioned scary movie. Now, please bear in mind, that I was a highly sensitive kid. I have been told many times how much people loved watching scary movies from the time they could remember, but that just wasn’t me. I was told over and over during this incident, as well as many others, that it was ‘just a movie’ and there was definitely no reason for me to be scared. But I was scared, and ashamed of being scared, and disappointed and rejected and nobody cared. I have written a previous post about how my father thought that scaring the crap out of me was the funniest thing in the world. That was bad for my brain in and of itself, but here we were in an unfamiliar place, with adults I didn’t know all that well, who refused to change the stimuli that was scaring me and also laughing at me for being scared. As I begged my mother to take me home, the older kids from the bedroom came out to laugh and tease me. The scene in the movie was of a girl being “sacrificed” to the monster. She was tied between 2 poles, thrashing back and forth, while the other people were dancing around a fire, chanting and beating drums. The older cousins started drumming the floor in time with the movie and chanting.
At some point, I must have blacked out, but I don’t remember that part. My mother told me years later that she was trying to calm me down and I just went limp in her arms. My eyes rolled back in my head and it took several minutes to wake me up.
Ok .. so that’s the story and in a way it’s kind of haunted me over the years. Not directly, but just under the surface.
So the counselor told me to choose the most disturbing image and words from the incident. I chose the image from the movie of the girl thrashing. It was burned in my brain. After a little discussion, I settled on the words “I’m unwanted” bcs that’s how I felt at the time. She held up 2 fingers and told me to hold the words and pictures in my mind while following. The movement was a bit faster than I expected. It took a little effort to keep up. It reminded me of erasing a chalkboard, moving the eraser back and forth. After the first round, she asked me what came up. Not very much. We did it again. The picture seemed slightly less clear or further away. The third time she told me to hold the picture and words, I couldn’t really do it anymore. I pulled them up, but then they would fleet away like any other thought. My brain started doing other things. We did a total of 6 sets. During those last 3 my brain went through a different scenario, without me making a conscious decision to, I saw a scene where we walked into the house and my little cousin was there excited to see me and we skipped off to play. There was another round when my brain just switched to going over my agenda for the rest of the day. I gotta say it was kind of amazing. When reflecting on it later, I saw a moment when the ‘uncle’ turned the TV off when I asked. It was relieving. We talked more about what happened, she said I did a great job and I left.
I don’t remember much about the rest of that day. My partner said that I seemed a little “off”. I definitely remember having a tough morning the next day, being extra irritated, which is the type of trigger I often get around domestic stuff like cleaning and shopping. We did our regular Saturday morning at the public market breakfast and had a friend meet us there, which is normally something that would affect my mood positively. I was definitely happy to see her and made it through without her knowing, but inside I was irritated. In a way that I can’t control and it keeps me from being present. Once we were alone, my partner asked why I was irritated and I had a mini meltdown about how much I dislike my life, which is a pretty common meltdown topic for me. He listened and empathized and said nice loving things and hugged me. The feelings passed and I started feeling better.
At that point I started noticing a pretty dramatic difference. Like my trigger level of feeling irritated with Jeff around domestic tasks which was previously at like a level 6-7 had now dropped to 3-4. By the following weekend it came up on Saturday evening after spending a couple of days on the usual tasks (I have Fridays off and he’s between projects), I asked him if he noticed that I had been less triggered and he agreed, saying that I seemed much more relaxed and less irritated with him. It’s almost like the back and forth motion was shaking apart these stuck neural pathways in my brain that made me not just over react to things but then my brain would feel hijacked, like consumed by and stuck in this negative state of emotion, while logically knowing that it was uncalled for but not really understanding why. It’s debilitating. And now it has finally started lightening.
Just a little disclaimer, I am by no means saying that my results would be the same for anyone else. I have in some ways been preparing for this for many years. I’m just recounting my personal experience for documentation and sharing in case anyone can relate or find it helpful.
In our second session, we talked for a while longer before starting the EMDR. She asked me about my life, who I’m close to and stuff like that. We talked a little about my relationship and of course I told her about how I was feeling much more at ease. I’ve never really been one to experience a ‘placebo’ effect, but this was a change that was noticeable. She asked if I would like to do it again and I agreed. From the beginning, when I went to hold the picture it was fleeting like any other thought and my brain would move on to something else. At the time of writing this, I don’t really even remember details about that part. I think we did 3 sets that time. She said that in the next session we would move on to another target.
That was a week ago now and I continue to feel the same lightness around things that just a few weeks ago would leave me feeling triggered for hours. So I’m past the initial fears about how it will go and on to the new ones like, my old favorite, ‘what if this is as good as it gets?” (credit to jack nicholson). I have another 6 or more weeks of treatment available. I can’t really imagine them all being this substantially impactful. So.. what if that’s it? Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty incredible and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but you know how the brain can be. Ruminating about bullshit. And then of course is the even bigger one, that after going through all of this, I continue to be a big loser, who can’t keep her finances in order and repeats the same stupid patterns over and over again. Now that’s some scary shit. Typical cPtsd stuff from what I hear.