EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Re:EMDR and legal obligations
interested · 11/28/02 at 10:25 PM ET
The discussions here intrigued me because of a recent experience. I directed an acquaintance to a website for an explanation and description of EMDR. The friend was very offended by the description, which referred to a patient who had lost a child in an accident. The friend percieved EMDR as a "quick fix" which was cruel and not possible. As she vented her feelings on this subject, I slowly realized that she did not know, or had forgotten, that I had lost an infant to SIDS. She seemed taken aback when I mentioned this, and when I followed up by saying that I found EMDR to be useful in "unsticking me" to ALLOW grieving, vs being a bypass to grieving. On the heels of that experience, I saw the discussion on stalking... and it struck me how "we" -- victims of trauma or loss -- are expected to react in certain ways. If we do not react in those ways (pathological grief reactions, hysteria, etc) then we run the risk of being disbelieved or treated as though we are callous or subhuman. I don't think these assumptions are conscious, but they are culturally ingrained and endorsed. It was, for instance, obvious that my acquaintance thought my calm re: my child's death to be "in poor taste". In a way, these recent discussions have been validating to me... I also have a history of chidhood abuse. This is yet another double bind. Not healing hurts, but healing invalidates the abuse itself. It is comforting, in a perverse way, to realize such double binds are societal as well as familial and inter/intra - personal.
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