EMDR FORUM ARCHIVE, 2000
Re:Two Questions Regards EMDR
Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PhD · 07/25/01 at 4:42 PM ET
THIS REPLY WAS INTENDED FOR THE PRIOR QUESTION, NOT THIS ONE. I'll do that, after cautioning my usual caution that I can't say one way or another whether the following applies in your case, so I'm not commenting on you but rather am making general comments. You'll need to talk to a professional to see whether or not it applies to you. Dissociation can range from mild occasional symptoms to a full dissociative disorder. It means that at the time a trauma (of any kind) occurred, a person felt so overwhelmed that they had to close down, number,and disconnect from feelings such as fear, sadness, rage, shame, so forth, or from information about what was happening. Often this happens for survival -- it's just too overwhelming, the person is to young and without coping resources, or there isn't time, so it gets set aside, disconnected, disowned. It's a lot like when you have company company in 10 minutes, and there is stuff laying around, and there isn't time to put things away properly, so you just close the door on a room and pretend it's not a mess. Works okay if you clean up later, after the company goes. If however people keep just throwing stuff in rooms and closing the door you end up with a house in disarray, closed doors, and risks of injury if you open a full closet! Dissociation means there are things that haven't been dealt wiht or processed sufficiently. Like a sliver, the dissociated material (or aspects of self) push forward, trying to get to the surface, in nightmares and flashbacks, but other parts of the self are trying to keep the doors shut, saying, "what who me? no problem there". A single session of EMDR -- even five minutes of EMDR -- can open a closet door so that the stuff spills out. People can leave feeling discombobulated, with pictures, memories, body sessions, emotions, flying around like so many dust bunnies, only not so soft. It can range from disorienting to extremely painful. If, as the training for EMDR teaches, EMDR practitioners routine screen clients to see if there is significant dissociative symptomatology IN ADVANCE OF THE FIRST EMDR SESSION, these closet dumpings can be avoided. EMDR is still useful for people with full trauma closets, but we approach the task systematically, not only assessing first, but studying thefloor plan of the house, assessing how much there is in the attic, basement, closets, and what is needed to clean out the painful material safely and without overwhelming everything. For some people, it is a large scale renovation. And remodelling can be quite upsetting, so it is wise to have a plan and safe places to live while it is going on. For some people with less dissociative symptomatology, EMDR will stir things up like vacuuming does, and there is just dust in the air for a while, it settles down, and things are fine. This is all metaphor, EMDR is not a vacuum, but it acts like it. Trauma is not dust, but it acts like it. Selves are not houses, but we live in them, and they act like it. Treatment plans are not blue prints, but both need to be drawn up in advance. Is that plain enough language? Sandra Paulsen Inobe, PhD
Fair Oaks, California
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