My First EMDR Therapy Session – Letting off the landmines

EMDR Therapy is a piece of cake!  

EMDR therapy utilises the natural healing ability of your body. 

Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist's finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field, whilst you are focusing on the events and things that are troubling you. 

The eye movements will last for a short while as you focus on the feelings/ sensations that are attached to that event.  With repeated sets of eye movements, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses its painful intensity and simply becomes a neutral memory of an event in the past.

Other associated memories may also heal at the same time.

My first EMDR therapy session

So, onto my first EMDR session (after an initial brief chat), we mapped out the memories and things that I thought were bothering me and troubling me, this (and is the same way I work today) is done by just trusting what comes out without analysing it and creating a mind map. Here is the great news…no talking! As you can see below, I just labelled each memory with something that was appropriate to me and laid out those events out on paper.

I was very surprised that once I started noting down the ones I knew were there as they were traumatic in nature on their own, other things just revealed themselves. 

You will see on the mind map there are numbers in each circle, and you may ask why. Well, after putting the words in the circles, the next stage of the process was to trust that inner voice of mind and ask the question individually of each event, how much they were bothering me, and one by one quickly put the first number into my head. It's a bit like when a doctor asks you how much pain you're in with an arm injury between 1-10. Trust me, this will all become apparent as it blew my mind just how accurate this proved to be!     

Then it was time to get to work!

To release these emotions, the mind map gives us the best point to start on the journey. We started with the lowest and least painful memories, which are the ones with the number 4 in the circle.

The dangers of lemon drizzle cake

How on earth can a cake cause anxiety? Well, as a young child I had choked on some lemon drizzle, which got stuck in my throat, resulting in a very scary experience in which I thought I was going to die. I was only 8 years old! 

I guess this just shows how easy it is to put a traumatic event down without having to disclose it to a therapist. As long as I knew what it was, that's all that mattered. 

The process of EMDR therapy

So onto the process, after being asked to close my eyes, take some nice deep breaths, I was asked whilst my eyes were closed to go and find that old memory or memories or what Lemon Drizzle related to.

As that memory recalled in my mind, I nodded my head to acknowledge it was there. The next question was “where do you feel it in your body?”. And who would have thought it, there it was, a burning sensation in my throat. Guess how strong it was…it was a 4 out of 10! 

Then being told to open my eyes as I followed the fingers, I could feel that 8 year old’s anxiety, whilst my eyes were moving, the next question was: “What would you like that feeling to be?” I replied 0, I want it gone, it definitely wasn’t a pleasant memory for me.

As my eyes moved, the feeling started to diminish and actually the story I thought had happened did change a little. The uncomfortable feeling was going, as was the anxiety that still existed. After a brief while (a few minutes), it had gone… totally gone and at a zero!

Then after closing and opening my eyes again, being asked another question, I revisited that old memory and that old feeling that came up the first time had GONE! As had the first layer of my anxiety triggers, I even had some cake later, something which I had tended to avoid in the past. 

You really can have your cake and eat it

It genuinely blew me away that in the first instance, that old feeling was still there 30 odd years later and EMDR therapy had taken it away!

I hope this has given the first insight into my journey, what happened in that first session and as to how anxiety is a piece of cake to EMDR.

I will continue with the other bombs in the next blog...however if you want more information on EMDR therapy or to book an appointment to start changing your life, please call me, it really is that easy.