EMDR Forum Archive, 1999
Re: emdr
Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D. · 3/18/00 at 5:22 am ET
Cindy, sorry to hear you've had such a difficult time of it. You've asked about trauma and EMDR, which are complicated questions. I'll try to answer it using some metaphors instead of being too technical or scientific. In times of trauma, the experience can be so overwhelming to the person that they take the thoughts, feelings, body sensations, and even their own behavior at the time and sort of put it in closets in their minds. Just as a sliver tries to work its way out of a finger, the trauma tries to come out so it can join other information in our memory, but it gets stuck and stays in these "closets". In our dreams, the traumas try to work out but some times it just wakes people up with nightmares. It can stay like this for years. EMDR works by opening up the closets and kind of vacuuming out all the unprocessed thoughts, feelings, body sensations and behaviors that happened at the time of the trauma. Finally, we can piece it together and understand it for the first time, and then and only then it can take its place with the other things we know and understand. No more does the trauma cause pain and fear. PTSD is more complicated when there is not only trauma from adulthood in the closets, but also if the closets were first filled with trauma from childhood. In that case, we have to "vacuum" out not only the trauma from adulthood, but the trauma from childhood too, sometimes, because the feelings of terror, shame, rage, sadness, etc are the same and can be stored in the same closets. Make sure that when you are ready to try EMDR that your therapist is experienced with the procedure with people who have had serious trauma, okay? Good luck, Cindy!
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