This Technique Helped Me Find Freedom

It’s no secret that I have struggled with mental health issues most of my life.?

Sometimes, I question why I share so openly but every single time I hit ‘post,’ I get an influx of messages from people sharing their experiences. Perfect strangers telling me things they have never told anyone.

I feel honored any time someone chooses to share their truth with me and I don’t take that lightly.

Recently, I heard Minda Harts say:

“We’re all the beneficiaries of someone else’s courage. Who is going to be the beneficiary of your courage?”

That hit me hard because there have been so many times that I did not have the courage to speak up. As I am working through past traumas in EMDR therapy to heal from two decades of living with PTSD, I am seeing very clearly all of the times that I had a choice to use my voice but didn’t, either because I didn’t know how or out of fear.

So now, I exercise courage as often as possible.?

A lot of folks have reached out curious about EMDR to navigate their own trauma or PTSD, so let’s get into it…

By now, you’ve likely heard of Bessel van der Kolk’s book, The Body Keeps the Score. And while the idea of the “body keeping the score” is becoming more widely accepted, we haven’t even touched on the more confounding piece, which is that - the mind hides that score from us.

When you experience trauma, be it sexual, violence, war, physical or emotional, your mind shifts how this trauma is perceived in order to protect you.

As a kid, I experienced emotional, physical and psychological abuse at the hands of one of my caretakers. Through the years, I have been able to see the abuse, name it and do A LOT to work around it but it’s only been through my recent-ish stint with EMDR that I see exactly how my mind twisted these events through shaming and blaming myself.?

It was my mind’s way of protecting me from a reality too harsh for any kid. We are wired for survival and being estranged from our caretakers when we’re young is a threat to that instinct.

So many of us live with these disconnections between what our body knows to be true and what our mind warps as the truth. Within this disconnection is where trauma exists and what EMDR does is create a connection to the true memory in the body and mind without being shaded by our protection lens. What this means is if you regularly deal with trauma or PTSD, you can actually heal from it rather than living a life full of managing symptoms.?

It’s important to note here that EMDR is not for everyone and may not be successful. While there are many promising studies on higher rates of efficacy over control groups, there is more research to be done. For some, symptoms may worsen through this process.

An actual EMDR session involves focusing on a traumatic memory, visualizing what you see, hear and smell, and taking note of how disturbing the event feels. Then, your therapist guides you through the eye movements and will ask what you notice. You repeat this process until your mind lets you through to the true event, and a ‘re-writing’ of sorts takes place, dissolving the warped event and healing the disconnect.

I just recently completed an event and it was excruciating.?

The next week was full of crying, processing and being triggered, often. I wanted to quit but when I recalled the memory at our next session, I felt almost no emotional response. My body and mind finally matched up and I could actually feel what I knew to be true, that I am safe.

These traumas and the re-living of them has felt like a prison, like my responses and life were not my own. To be able to take back over is beyond freeing.

And for anyone that has struggled or is struggling with mental health issues, I hope you find that same freedom. I’ll keep sharing resources here in hopes that it might help you find the healing modality you’re looking for...

??This week I’m…?

?? Reading:?

• Dune, Frank Herbert
• Grist for the Mill, Ram Dass

?? Listening:

• ?Gabor Maté, Under the Skin Podcast

????Practicing:?

• EMDR
• Reiki

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