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A Deep Dive Into EMDR Therapy
170 Plays1 year ago
Want even more info on EMDR therapy? We’ve got it! This week Julie sat down with Stephanie Miller to continue exploring its transformative impact on trauma recovery. Tune in for a captivating conversation that explores the art and science of EMDR therapy, offering a deeper understanding of its transformative potential.
About today's guest:
Stephanie Miller is a Licensed Professional Counselor, Certified EMDR therapist, EMDR consultant and CEO of a Christian-Based group practice, Jeremiah Counseling LLC in Lawrenceville, GA. She has been married to her husband, Rob for over 20 years, has two wonderful teenage daughters, and three cats. In her spare time she loves to craft, read, and spend time with friends and family. Her group specializes in helping all women ages 16 and up, experience hope, healing, and transformation from any type of traumatizing or adverse life events in their lifetime using EMDR, DBT, CBT and IFS/Ego state therapy blend, along with being polyvagal and attachment informed.
Get in touch with Stepahnie:
www.jeremiahcounseling.com
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Transcript
Introduction to Season 2 and Guests
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to season two of Outside of Session. I'm your host, licensed clinical social worker, and therapist BFF, Julie Hilton. This season, I'm interviewing some incredible guests who also happen to be experts in their fields. Mental health, motherhood, spirituality, and so much more, I can't wait for their stories to be told. These are all the conversations I'm having outside of session.
What is EMDR Therapy?
00:00:46
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of outside of session. Today I'm interviewing Stephanie Miller, who is a licensed professional counselor, certified EMDR therapist and EMDR consultant. So she knows EMDR backwards and forwards, which is why I wanted to have her on the show today, because today we are going into a deep dive into EMDR therapy.
00:01:08
Speaker
Stephanie specializes in helping women heal from complex PTSD, dissociative disorders by using EMDR parts work, and along with some other therapies as well. She is also the CEO of her own counseling practice, which is Jeremiah Counseling. It's a Christian-based group practice, and it specializes in helping all women ages 16 and up experience hope, healing, and transformation from traumatizing or adverse life events in their lifetime.
00:01:38
Speaker
Um, she's also passionate about helping other EMDR therapists be the best that they can be for their clients by providing EMDR consultation, which is a big deal. So I'm really excited about today's episode because last season I was able to share a little bit about EMDR and some of the trauma episodes, but today we really get into it. So if you have, if you've ever wondered something about EMDR, I'm hoping today's episode will answer some of those questions and make sure, um, at the end of the episode, you check out the show notes because we've also have some resources there.
00:02:07
Speaker
So here we go, we're going into a deep dive into EMDR with Stephanie Miller. Stephanie, hello, thank you so much for being here today with me. Hello, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'm so excited about this. Today we're gonna be talking about, today's episode is called a deep dive into EMDR because that's your specialty and we're gonna talk about so many different things about EMDR today and I shared with you that last season I did a couple of episodes on
00:02:35
Speaker
trauma and I kind of briefed a little bit about EMDR but I did
Reframing Trauma with EMDR
00:02:40
Speaker
not go into a lot of the specifics. So one of the reasons that I wanted to have you here today is because you're such an expert in EMDR that I just have a million questions for you. All right, I'm ready. Yeah, let's get it.
00:02:52
Speaker
And I even wanted to start today with, before we hit record, we were having a little bit of a conversation, and I really liked some of the things that you were saying. You were saying that EMDR is not just a technique in therapy, which it is, and we're gonna talk lots about what that technique looks like, but it also is very much a framework, is the word that you use, that therapists use it as a framework for the way that we view trauma. Yes, yes.
00:03:19
Speaker
Tell us a little bit. Let's just start there. Cause I loved what you were saying about that. And I was like, hold on. We need to record that. We need to get that, um, on the podcast. So let's start by just talking about what did you mean by that? Yes. Yeah. So EMDR therapists see how we have this technique that we'll talk about, but basically as the EMDR therapists, we see our clients in a whole different light. So when we conceptualize their treatment, we see symptoms, not as disorders or illnesses. Yes.
00:03:45
Speaker
But we see their symptoms and their behaviors that have kind of creeped up in life as something that has come up from past distressing, overwhelming events that they've been through, adverse life events that they've been through, traumatic life events.
00:04:03
Speaker
even humiliating or embarrassing times as children being with a teacher can create symptoms of anxiety or you know so we as a therapist when my clients walk in the door EMDR is this like world of thinking of what has happened in their past
Addressing Anxiety and Self-Beliefs
00:04:23
Speaker
that is sat in their nervous system and the beliefs about themselves to like creep up as an adult or a teenager to express depression, anxiety, all those things.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yeah and I love what you just said too about how it sits in the nervous system but also the beliefs that we have about ourselves because I think people don't always necessarily put that together because anxiety feels like such a physical like visceral response to things, right?
00:04:55
Speaker
And so often it's happening and a lot of times people aren't even aware of what's going on. Like I don't even know what I'm anxious about. I just feel the anxiety and you don't necessarily think about there's something going on about a belief about yourself. And I think that even when I did my EMDR training and it's been a few years ago now, I think I did it back in 2018 is when I did my level one and level two, but even then I didn't realize that that was gonna be a part of it all.
00:05:24
Speaker
But doing that work to figure out what people's core negative beliefs are and Thinking about how how they sit in our nervous system. I like that. I'm gonna steal that from you I like the way you said that And that's so much of what you're seeing when a client walks through the door and they're presenting with the symptoms
00:05:41
Speaker
And I always say that there's the picture, which is the memory, the cognition, which is the belief about yourself. And then there's the emotion, which is what you feel. And it's all kind of like frozen together. And doing EMDR kind of melts them away and separates them and allows you to separate them out from each other. Yes. And we got to add on body symptoms like body, you know, body sensations can be trapped as well.
00:06:08
Speaker
So yeah. So most EMDR therapists, I know we don't necessarily like to diagnose, right? Right. Because that's, I don't know the whole label thing. It just doesn't feel good sometimes. And I do understand that there's a purpose for it in some ways, but I'm not big on diagnosing. I'm more interested in seeing people heal. Yes. Sometimes I don't think diagnoses help people heal necessarily.
00:06:38
Speaker
It's almost like it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of like, this is who I have to be. Yeah. So I think, like you said, when I have a client walk through the door, I don't think of a diagnosis. I think about like, I have a lot of curiosity of why I don't think that's just who you are. I want to know where did this come from? And with EMDR, I feel like, I feel like you can always find a route.
00:07:06
Speaker
Yes. You can always find even, even like we said, even if it wasn't an embarrassing memory that as an adult, you want to be able to say that it wasn't that big of a deal. Why am I still holding onto it? But as a kid, it was a big deal. Exactly. It was a really, really impactful moment. Yep. And your body just stored it.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so there's also a ton of fascinating like neuroscience and brain science behind EMDR. And I am not the person to ask about that. There's a ton of it that like I don't even understand. And there's a lot of it that I learned probably and have just probably forgotten about it. But how would you explain in your own words, how EMDR works?
00:07:55
Speaker
especially for just a lay person. Maybe some listeners have never even heard of EMDR. Maybe some people have actually gone through EMDR therapy and they just don't know the brain science behind it. But how would you explain it? Yeah, so first I like to go back and talk about, you know, what's going on in the brain when we're going through something so overwhelming, distressing or traumatizing. And then we can kind of go into, you know, how EMDR helps the brain.
00:08:25
Speaker
reprocess and desensitize.
How EMDR Reprocesses Memories
00:08:28
Speaker
So basically what happens when we have a moment that is traumatizing or overwhelmingly distressing, what happens is our limbic system in the back part of our brain, more towards the right we have the amygdala and hippocampus, and amygdala is a huge part of our fight-or-flight system. So what happens is in these moments sometimes it's overtaxed, it's overwhelmed, and that limbic system cannot
00:08:55
Speaker
seem to process it in that moment. Um, and so it kind of, what happens are these neurons and they're get stuck. And so what happens is what we talked about before these neurons hold on to maybe what I learned about that moment about myself, about the world, about others. Um, the emotion gets held in there. It's like frozen in time, the body sensations. Um, and, um,
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, so a lot of the neurons just get held in time, frozen in space. They don't have a way to process normally. Like if we went through something a little bit less distressing, our brain would process it and bring it into memory and file it away in a storage system.
00:09:41
Speaker
So typically what happens is in these traumatic moments, if you think of like, I like to think of like maybe a bunch of laundry that's unfolded in your laundry basket ready to be folded, but it just keeps piling up. These are like your neurons full of like frozen in place traumatic moments or distressing moments that were never processed.
00:10:03
Speaker
And so what we get to do in trauma therapy is we get to fold them and put them away or hang them up. And they're finally not falling out into everyday life, into making more of a mess. And so what EMDR does is helps basically, if we think of the laundry, folding it and putting away on the shelf or hanging them up.
00:10:25
Speaker
I've not heard that metaphor before. Yeah. And I love a good metaphor. And I've used the metaphor of the filing system. I don't know if you've heard that. But yes, yeah, where if you think of like an index card, filed away in a drawer, and every time we have a new memory, it gets filed in
00:10:44
Speaker
When we're thinking back on a memory, we remember it, but to really think about what we felt on that day, you would really have to pull out that index card and really work to be able to remember it. But these memories that don't get processed correctly, they're just kind of sticking out there. They're flagged. And you don't have to work very hard to remember exactly what you felt on that day. It's kind of like they feel like they're still looming right over your shoulder.
00:11:10
Speaker
they don't even necessarily feel like they were filed in the right order. So something that happened in like 1999 feels like when you're having those symptoms, it feels like it didn't get filed at all. Exactly. Like it's happening in present day.
00:11:23
Speaker
Yep, yep. And another thing that I feel like is really important to mention is that you have to think about the developmental level that we're at as we're experiencing something, right? Because when you're a kid and you're trying to process in an event, whether it was something like your parents got in a really big fight or something happened at school, I mean, like, I feel like we all have some kind of mean girl story from middle school. Yeah, yeah.
00:11:50
Speaker
And you have to think about that. You were trying to make sense of it and process it with the limited ability that you had at that age. With that little kid brain. Yeah, what a kid brain was experiencing. And that's how so often a faulty belief about yourself gets tied in. It's because when you're a kid and say like your parents get into an argument, you attach something to it like, well, they're fighting because I'm not good enough. That's right.
00:12:19
Speaker
when actually we know it had nothing to do with you. It was about bills or who knows what it was about. Right. Yeah. But like as a kid, we just, we just blame ourselves for everything. So a lot of times a faulty
00:12:34
Speaker
negative core belief or negative belief about ourself gets tied to it, which I think is another reason why our brain has a hard time processing it. Because it's like, this is the message that I'm getting. But I still don't know how I wasn't good enough in the moment.
00:12:52
Speaker
But as a kid, I just know that it's really scary. And again, like as a kid, you're not really necessarily looking for the logic behind what you're telling yourself or the why. Right. Your prefrontal cortex, which is where logic comes from, it's not fully developed until at least what, 22, 23, even a little older. Yeah, exactly. So it can't, that little kid brain can't take in and conceptualize what's going on. Yeah.
00:13:18
Speaker
Right.
EMDR vs Talk Therapy
00:13:20
Speaker
So that's kind of how you phrase it with your clients, right? Yep. How we kind of phrase it in the beginning of saying what's going on in your brain right now. And then we then talk about how EMDR helps it. Yeah.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah, and I have a lot of clients who come in who might have maybe some awareness that they had some trauma in their childhood, whether it's big T or little t doesn't matter. They've got some awareness, but I'll often hear them say, but I'm having anxiety now in the present.
00:13:52
Speaker
And I just, I don't want to open those doors from the past. Can we not just work on what's happening now? Like if they're having say anxiety in their marriage, um, they'll say, like, can I not just work on my, can I not just work on the present issue? Can I not just work on my marriage?
00:14:11
Speaker
And I feel like there's also a lot of people who have maybe a fear of going back to some of those places or maybe not even fear. Sometimes I think people just see it as being irrelevant to what's happening in the present and they're like, I don't want to have to go back and talk about things from the past. Like say when my parents divorced or maybe when I was bullied in high school, like they want to be only dealing with the present and they don't want to have to go back to the past because they feel like it's not important.
00:14:40
Speaker
Like can we just leave the past in the past? Yes. So how do you help them understand why it's beneficial to unpack some of that? Yeah. I mean, first of all, I do want to respect the client. Like if they're adamant that no, we're not going there. We, we go it. We just do present day. But, um, but I do tell them like, you know, um, that I kind of, I love metaphors as well. And I kind of, I show them like what we could do is if you can imagine yourself as this flower,
00:15:09
Speaker
you know, planted in a pot with the roots growing. Like, this is how you were. Like, you are a beautiful flower. You were created as a beautiful flower. And your roots grow deep and they're just beautiful. But then life comes and brings all of these words, you know, that were spoken to you or incidences that have happened in life that were distressing, like we said, are traumatic. So,
00:15:35
Speaker
I said, and then that, those little seeds that go in that potted plant just grow to be weeds and they just engulf you. And those weeds are anxiety or I hate myself. I don't, you know, like all of these beliefs and symptoms. I said, so what we could do is work on present day anxiety and marriage and that would cut the weeds down. So what happens when we cut the weeds down?
00:16:03
Speaker
They grow back, right? And so I said, so basically EMDR is going to the root. And so we can think that anxiety in our present day marriage could be the root and we can try, but ultimately I think we're cutting the weeds down. So let's maybe explore. Is it okay to explore that the root might be from the chaos at home or the divorce or, you know, um,
00:16:26
Speaker
would that be okay to just explore and and if it's not it's not but sometimes we need to get to that route to get rid of you know that weed so
00:16:38
Speaker
Yeah. So that makes me think of another question that I had for you. Um, and you kind of just touched on it, but how do you feel like EMDR is different from a regular talk therapy? And what do you feel like the differences between, you know, more traditional therapies are versus EMDR? Because I do feel like there are some really big differences.
00:17:00
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, I would agree. Like we have a big one of CBT and it is focusing on our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, but it's in this, like you said, in the cognitive and that kind of left brain focused therapy. And so yeah, we can talk about it and help somewhat desensitize it and talk about it all day long and for
00:17:23
Speaker
I've had clients that come in, yeah, it's been 20 years and I'm still feeling it in my body. I'm still having emotional reactions. Um, my beliefs of myself are a little bit better, um, which is good, but, but ultimately the difference is EMDR is, is known, um,
00:17:42
Speaker
with studies to really be a brain-based therapy because of the way we do bilateral stimulation. So I'm going to just go in and talk a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. So what happens is in EMDR is eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing.
00:17:58
Speaker
The bilateral stimulation that we do, sometimes eye movement, we found out now that like tappers in your hands or tapping yourself left to right, these types of bilateral stimulation actually mimic REM, rapid eye movement like we are when we're dreaming. And so when we're sleeping and we have rapid eye movement,
00:18:23
Speaker
Our brain is basically processing what happened. But what happens with trauma and very distressing memories that have been locked in the past and kind of avoided or forgotten, your brain can't fully process it. So what we found is actually EMDR, there's two different things, but we're thinking bilateral stimulation can actually mimic rapid eye movement.
00:18:51
Speaker
And so that's what we're trying to do in our sessions is using rapid eye movement or bilateral stimulation to help process these memories. So what happens is it activates your amygdala. It almost calms it down enough too that we're able to process. And then what we do is we really focus on a particular memory
00:19:15
Speaker
And work through it and somehow the brain is an amazing thing where it just helps it finally move along Basically if you think about a train at the train station, we're finally moving it all the way to you know to the station And you know I'm not a neuroscientist so I can't understand like everything about it, but I do know the other thing is bilateral stimulation is also
00:19:41
Speaker
is also a part of distracting our working memory.
The Science Behind EMDR
00:19:44
Speaker
And so when we can distract our working memory, then we can start working through past stuff with not feeling as much distress. So that's the desensitization part. And once we can calm the amygdala down and we work through it, then finally the processing happens where we can move it to a place of reprocessing it.
00:20:08
Speaker
Clients then start to feel, they really do feel like I do belong or I am loved. They feel, wow, I feel calm. I feel at peace. I feel lighter now. Or then they feel, you know, my body, I don't have any of the body tension in my chest anymore.
00:20:29
Speaker
And it's amazing to see that. And it's almost like in the beginning of a session, you're climbing up a mountain. It's kind of intense, but it's not overwhelming, but enough to like, this is hard. And then at the end of the session, boom, or a couple sessions, depending on what they're working on. But they can finally go down that mountain and have so much relief.
00:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And the easiest way that I have found to explain it is that we all have these moments where we can say, I know this, but I feel that and they're very different. Exactly. Like, I know this person is not mad at me, but I feel like they are.
00:21:09
Speaker
or I know that I did the best that I could, but it feels like it wasn't good enough. That for me is the simplest way to explain the difference between our cognitive brain and what we think about something versus the emotional part of the brain and how we feel about it. That's right, yes.
00:21:27
Speaker
And when you're talking about a trauma where there's a lot of fear behind it, you might be able to say, I know I'm safe right now, but my amygdala is on high alert right now. And that's when my anxiety is through the roof. So even though, again, like my logical brain is saying, I know I'm safe, my emotional brain is saying, No, you're not and you need to prepare to fight or flight.
00:21:50
Speaker
And you just can't out logic that alarm system in your brain. So that's why no matter how many times you try to tell yourself, I'm safe, I'm safe, I'm safe, it really doesn't penetrate.
00:22:02
Speaker
Yep. Right. But what they found with the bilateral stimulation, you know, the, the left, right, left, right rhythm, it opens up almost like opens up communication between the two parts of your brain, the logical and the more emotional so that they can communicate with each other better. And that's what we're trying to replicate in EMDR therapy.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yes. Yes. And what we do know then afterwards, like it's consolidated in your memory bank. So it's no longer frozen in time. It's folded, like we said, and put away or in the file system, right? Putting it in a way finally where it's not popping up when you're triggered throughout your day in 2023.
00:22:42
Speaker
Yeah. What are some of those things that you hear from your clients after they've reprocessed a memory? Like if it's something that for the past five, 10, 20 plus years, every time they've thought back on it, it's been really overwhelming and felt really present.
00:23:00
Speaker
But now that they've reprocessed it with EMDR, what do they say it's like? Because I know nobody's going to look back on that day and say, oh, that was actually a good day. Something hard still happened on that day. But how do your clients describe what it's like to look back on some of those memories after they've been reprocessed? So yeah, with the clients that come in my door after working through really hard things,
00:23:28
Speaker
It has happened and that was hard, but they feel now that they can move on like I and I am no longer there anymore. I am safe.
00:23:42
Speaker
this was hard, but it's not where I am now. Um, you know, and then once again, like some of the things that a lot of my clients come in with now are, I mean, really deep beliefs about I am worthy. You know, I was meant to be here. Um,
00:24:02
Speaker
It oh my gosh. Yeah, there's just so many things and and they've noticed a calmness they notice all nightmares have stopped they've noticed They don't feel as anxious throughout the day. There's a lot of things that less reactionary Yeah, I noticed that a lot to their triggers a lot of times. They're no longer triggers. Yeah, and so that they can have more of
00:24:25
Speaker
Peace throughout their day they can enjoy contentment and calm and their body will react when need be For something that is really in present day that needs to be reacted to absolutely because I'm glad you said that because our amygdala serves a purpose we need it if there is a
00:24:45
Speaker
Um, if you're driving and a car pulls out in front of you, you need to be able to react. If you are in a relationship and you're unsafe, you need your body to tell you that. Um, it's almost like, I feel like EMDR recalibrates your nervous system after it has been overactive for so long. And it puts it in a place where it responds more appropriately in a way that actually protects you so that you're not always so hypervigilant to what I've also noticed, which is really cool is.
00:25:11
Speaker
After, you know, I'll have a client who's finished their treatment plan and maybe they come back after, you know, a year and say, oh, something happened and I'd like some EMDR. And we go and process it together a little bit trying to figure out what we need to process through EMDR. And I'm like, you know, your brain is already kind of doing this. So your brain actually learns the healthy patterns and how to process it to a cognition of,
00:25:37
Speaker
You know, I'm working on this. It's okay. I'm learning and growing through this and all these things. And I'm like, you know, your brain was working through this a lot easier than, than it used to. So your brain almost gets into this pattern of, of a healthy way of processing it. Oh, I like that. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Um, so this is another question that I didn't prep ahead of time, but I'm thinking of it now.
Addressing Negative Core Beliefs
00:26:02
Speaker
Um, we're talking about core negative beliefs.
00:26:06
Speaker
And I wanted to ask you what types of traumas and issues you especially work with in your practice. And I want to hear about that, but I also want to see if we can list for people some of what those negative core beliefs actually are. Because a lot of times what we think about a memory we don't realize is the core belief that's being triggered. Because we're not necessarily using that language with ourselves at that moment.
00:26:33
Speaker
Um, and it's not until you sit and kind of sort through it that you're like, Oh yeah, I was telling myself that I wasn't good enough and I didn't even realize it in the moment. So that's kind of a two part question. What kind of traumas do you work with? And then what are some of the pretty common core beliefs that you see come up?
00:26:50
Speaker
Yes, so I personally work with a lot of different traumas and in my past I've worked with a good amount and I love working with women with trauma. So I'm going to kind of tell what I've worked with and then kind of what I specialize in now.
00:27:07
Speaker
But at my group practice, we kind of specialize in all types of trauma with women in distressing events, adverse life, childhood events. But for me personally, I've worked with first responders, helping with vicarious PTSD. I've worked with ICU nurses in COVID land, which was really hard. And they, you know, once again, PTSD, helping them
00:27:30
Speaker
Helping them feel fit for duty, you know that they can clear their headspace. I love working with that population I also work with women who are adults now that Were abused as children whether it was physical emotional sexual Neglect those types of things right now that's a lot of my main passion is working with those women and
00:27:56
Speaker
I've worked with women who have been sexually assaulted as a teen or early 20s or later on in life.
00:28:05
Speaker
I've worked with women in domestic abuse, domestic violence, and other types of traumas would be car accidents. I myself had PTSD from a car accident in high school, so to be able to help women heal from those things. I love working with women with medical traumas. I love helping moms through
00:28:29
Speaker
you know, birthing traumas, helping them grieve and then move through it so that they can be feeling more present for their babies or their kiddos. Oh my gosh, I could go on. I love working with women who have dissociative identity disorder or somatic symptoms like functional neurological disorder, which where it's unexplained seizures or unexplained
00:28:54
Speaker
somatic issues that the neurologist like sorry you got to work on some trauma you know so I'm like come here let's try it chronic pain all different things I'm starting to like I'm interested in helping with migraines and yeah all different things but my main love is working with dissociative disorders and that childhood childhood traumas and helping them heal from that yeah I feel like
00:29:20
Speaker
So many people think of EMDR as being the preferred treatment for like the big T traumas. A lot of what you just listed, right? But I have found that it still works really well for some of the little T traumas too. Yes.
00:29:36
Speaker
And so for people who are, for people who have thought about doing EMDR and they kind of heard you just make that list and they're like, ah, but I don't, that doesn't fit me. That doesn't fit me. That doesn't sound like my story. Um, absolutely. You can do it on
00:29:53
Speaker
Small, smaller traumas. Yes. And I've had experience, you know, I've had people come in to work on anxiety, like we said, or depression. And what we do is we look backwards and we do find that, well, goodness, not huge traumas, but man, yeah, you had some teacher trauma back in the day you didn't even know about. And we helped them clear through it. And it's amazing how they can feel less anxiety in the school when I work with adolescents or
00:30:24
Speaker
working with, they're finding out more and more bipolar disorder.
00:30:29
Speaker
is actually not all. Some are misdiagnosed. So bipolar disorder is important to medicate. But sometimes it's misdiagnosed. So working on, let's look at the past. What were you in? So even family drama or moms that worked a lot and you didn't have a lot of attention. Or I've worked with people who were like one in seven kids. OK, well, that was a little traumatic for a kiddo. I mean, you might not think so.
00:30:57
Speaker
You didn't get the attention or the attachment you might have needed and so there's a lot of different things that you know that we can go into and it can help with a whole bunch of different types of what our community calls or the medical community calls disorders or illnesses that typically can
00:31:15
Speaker
we can find stuff in the past to help them work through those memories and yeah.
Using EMDR for Future Challenges
00:31:21
Speaker
Do you ever do EMDR? I haven't done this in a really long time but I don't know why it just popped into my mind but EMDR on a future event? Yes. Talk about that. Yes. Because a lot of my clients have been surprised when I said that because they're like but it's not a memory.
00:31:34
Speaker
And actually, if we think about it, it is a memory because your brain is holding on. I was just listening to another podcast about this, but your brain is holding on to... It's a picture that it created. Exactly. It's creating this picture, which is now a memory of what your future... So when you're a kid and saying, well, I envision myself to be like this and now I'm not, so I hate myself.
00:31:56
Speaker
Ooh, okay, so we have this memory that's been stuck there, you know, but now we still do that to this day. So in EMDR, it's what we call a three-pronged approach. So we work on past, and then we work on present-day triggers, and we work on a future rehearsal or a future template.
00:32:15
Speaker
And what's really cool is we can, yeah, if you're imagining you have social anxiety and you're going to be going to this big event that you have to do for work, like how can I process through this? So we do this future thing about just imagining yourself in this room with all these people.
00:32:39
Speaker
How do you actually want to feel and think about yourself? What is it that you want to believe that you're confident, that you feel calm? And I want you just to look and just run a movie in your head. And we have them run that movie in their head. And how true does it feel that I can be confident in here? And we help them work through that. We help them then problem solve any kind of hiccups that they foresee in that situation. And we add bilateral stimulation to it.
00:33:08
Speaker
And it helps them feel empowered. What's amazing is EMDR is being used in the sports performance world. It's being used for CEOs going to big, huge events. I mean, it's not only this trauma stuff, but it's helping us get through stuff, but also helping in all different other worlds too.
00:33:27
Speaker
Yeah, I've used it for future events for things like job interviews. Yes, me too. That's a big one that I've found for if people have, I've had a client with some car wreck anxiety.
00:33:42
Speaker
And so we didn't just do EMDR on the accident itself, but we did it on future like her imagining her getting back behind the wheel of a car. And it went really, really well. Same thing for flying. We processed through some things that we found underneath a fear of flying, but then we also did a future like imagining yourself going through takeoff and everything like that. And it's been really, really cool. Yeah, it's amazing. And sometimes we have to do the past work first before we get to the future.
00:34:12
Speaker
Um, but sometimes, um, sometimes we can do the future before even hitting the past or present. So Hey everyone, I just wanted to pause for a quick moment to say thank you so much for all the love and support that you're showing outside of session. If you haven't already, do me a huge favor and hit the subscribe button. Give me a five star review and share this podcast with all of your friends. Help me take this show to another level.
00:34:42
Speaker
Now back to today's episode. So that brings me to my next question. Um, because I think all of this is really interesting, but a lot of people are just going to want to know, well, what is it? What is it like in session?
00:34:59
Speaker
Actually, backtrack, I didn't even finish the second part of that last question. Let's talk about the core negative beliefs first, because I think that that really is a really important piece of it. Do you have kind of like a summarized list that if you feel like most things boil down to just like a handful of things that we can adopt about ourselves?
00:35:18
Speaker
Yeah, actually, we're given that during EMDR training. We have a whole list of negative cognitions. And then on the other side, it's these positive cognitions. And there's different categories. So categories of responsibility, control and power, thoughts about myself. And I can't remember. There's a couple other categories. There's a survival. Yes.
00:35:43
Speaker
and vulnerability. Are those the ones that you were given? I think those are the five categories that I was given. And so a lot of the core beliefs that I hear are, I'm not safe. Like you've mentioned before, I have no power. I have no control. And that's where we get some of our obsessive compulsive types of behaviors.
00:36:09
Speaker
Let's see, yeah, I'm not good enough. I don't belong. I'm not lovable. I am not wanted. It's all my fault. And that's huge. A lot of traumas we take on, especially if it's little kiddos, even adults, it's all my fault. I should have done something. Yeah, that's a big one. Yeah, like we get stuck in that.
00:36:36
Speaker
And yeah, so I'm trying to think of there's just a huge amount like a whole list that can come and I tend to get a lot of more of the the personal like I'm bad. Yeah. And yeah, I see that a lot too, especially with women because I think that that boils down to like the the worth value category. Yes.
00:36:57
Speaker
And so if you've had these experiences where you have been made to feel like you're worthless or that's how you interpreted it, you carry that. I'm not valuable. I'm not, I'm not worthy. You know, if, if I were worthy that they wouldn't treat me this way, right? Yeah. And what we can boil it down to is if we go, you know, we take all of these different core beliefs that the main ones,
00:37:21
Speaker
we can hold on to it. It really, it is all survival. Like as, as a being when we're babies, we can't survive on our own and we have to attach. And so if, you know, it all boils down to, you know, uh, I'm not going to be safe. You know, if I'm not loved, I'm not going to be safe. If I'm, if I'm bad, you know, I'm, I'm not going to be taken care of and you know, all of these things. And so, um,
00:37:48
Speaker
So it can boil down to these hard kind of survival types of beliefs about self that really can wreck us. What that makes me think of is sometimes people
00:38:02
Speaker
God, we're so hard on ourself. And I hear people say all the time, like, I don't know why I just can't get rid of this anxiety. It's like they minimize it. They're like, life is fine. I should be able to function. And they're just so hard on themselves. And when, when you take a step back and look at what we're working through,
00:38:22
Speaker
That things about your survival as a human things about the the core things about getting your needs met your emotional needs your physical needs Being loved being cared for like the very core of who we are When at any point in life we're made to think that that's in jeopardy. We learn to protect ourselves and
00:38:43
Speaker
And so if you're an adult and you're 30, 40 years old and you're experiencing anxiety and you're so frustrated with yourself, like please be gentle with yourself. Like you're not just dealing with some surface level, um, sweaty palms and racing heart and thoughts that won't turn off. Like we are, we are wired so deeply to protect ourselves.
00:39:06
Speaker
And what you're dealing with right now is way bigger than just something that you should be able to shove down and move past. And so, um, I dunno, like I just want to encourage people to have a lot of grace for themselves and to realize that if they're struggling, it's, it's not silly. It's not because they're just not able to cope. It's because there are some really deep things going on. That's right. That's right. They've had some hard experiences. Yeah.
00:39:33
Speaker
Yeah, I tell the women who walk through my door that I need you to give yourself grace. That is my prescription. We're going to learn compassion and understanding. And I'm a big parts work fan, I know. And so these neurons that are frozen in time, I call that a part of yourself that's been frozen in time. And so I do say that part of yourself, we have to remember that eight-year-old who went through that. That's a part of you that's kind of creeping up in everyday life right now.
00:40:02
Speaker
and but think about that sweet part you know like you know so we try to we try to bring in some understanding compassion about why you're experiencing what you're experiencing and help normalize it that what you've been through like of course you're gonna feel some of this stuff and that doesn't mean you're
00:40:18
Speaker
your odd or your crazy, like your brain has had to come up with coping skills and ways to do things in order, like you said, to protect yourself and survive. And so it might not necessarily be helpful in today, in today's time, but it sure was back in the day. So how can we, with EMDR, that also helps is our behaviors change. We want to have different coping skills. We give the parts of ourselves new jobs to protect ourselves. So it's pretty cool.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, now let's jump into what does an actual EMDR session look like and what can clients expect, especially in the reprocessing sessions, which I think I don't know if I clarified in some of the episodes that I did about EMDR before, but every session is not a reprocessing session. That's right.
00:41:06
Speaker
All the back work that you do is considered EMDR because there are different phases that you go through. So not every session is going to be the reprocessing part of it. But typically when people think of, I did EMDR today, they're talking about they had the bilateral stimulation, they went back to a memory, that kind of thing.
00:41:22
Speaker
So yeah, what can people expect?
EMDR Session Overview
00:41:25
Speaker
Yes. So in that session, what we do is I always have, first of all, some Jolly Ranchers or some peppermints in my desk because that is a nice grounding tool. Oh, I've never done that before. Maybe give them some tea or have them have some water tea that they can feel grounded and comfortable. But I love the candy.
00:41:46
Speaker
And I'm having to pick up some sugar free just in case for my others. So I always have something like that just in case that they're welcome to.
00:41:55
Speaker
What we do is we sit down and we pinpoint the session before we would do a treatment plan, kind of a roadmap of where her brain was taking her with all the past yuck. So how do you decide that? How do you put together a roadmap? Yeah. So in that session we sit together and I said, okay, so our present day issue that you really want to work through is, and then they'll say, let's say anxiety.
00:42:20
Speaker
Okay so I want you to give a recent example of the closest time or recently when you've experienced anxiety and so she'll just let me know like you know yeah I had anxiety on the roadway and I was gripping the steering wheel or you know or I had anxiety at work with my boss. Okay so I want you now to think about how that feels in your body
00:42:45
Speaker
How is that, what emotions are creeping up right now? Just take moments to notice and maybe some thoughts about self right now. And now with all of that, I want you just to kind of go back in time to as far as you can remember. And I want you to,
00:43:00
Speaker
float back, and as early as you can remember, those same feelings, same sensations, thoughts. And typically, like, oh, I haven't even thought about this. But when I was five. It's always something so random. Always something so random that people are like, I have no idea if this is relevant or not. And I'm always like, it is. Because your brain just brought it up for a reason. That's not a coincidence. Exactly. Because those neurons have connections. And so then at the five-year-old one, we write it down. And then, OK, from there, anything
00:43:30
Speaker
either earlier or after and then we kind of go from there and it's amazing your brain has found lots of connections that are associated with this anxiety and um so then what we do is we move on to present day are there any triggers so boss or car or or my husband or you know all these different um social media yes yes or situations or places you know um yeah so and then we work on the future and say you know
00:43:59
Speaker
Let's say we're all done with EMDR and you've worked on your past and present day triggers. Where do you want to see yourself? How do you want to feel about yourself? How do you want to think about yourself and these triggers and you know, they're like, I finally want to feel like I belong or I want to finally feel peace or that it's over now.
00:44:20
Speaker
And we write them all down. And so then our next session is when we actually pick one, either usually it's the first memory or the worst memory that we like to start with from the past. At that point in your treatment with your clients, do you name the negative core belief at that point?
00:44:39
Speaker
So I know some schools of training do have that, and I have not, an older school where I haven't necessarily named the negative belief at the time. I have found that to be, especially when I first started, I would really, really get bogged down trying to pinpoint what the negative belief was for all of these memories that we just came up with, and would waste a lot of time trying to narrow it down, and now I don't bother with that.
00:45:08
Speaker
Yeah, I don't do that until we work into our next session when we're actually processing. Yeah, yeah, I was just curious if that was supposed to be done. Yeah, I just I know in the beginning I would, you know, we would
00:45:23
Speaker
figure out some of these memories and it would be so hard to figure out which one fit the best because it's like well I feel like I do bad things and I also feel like I'm a failure and I also feel like I'm not good enough and I also like it felt like there were so many different ones and we would be trying to get to but what's the one at the
00:45:40
Speaker
core and as a newly trained clinician, like I spent a lot of time thinking that that was the most important thing was to have the right negative cognition. But now I just kind of go with it and I just trust that your, your brain's going to let us know what it needs to process through. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Cause in that next session, that's when we have them sit down and I say, okay, we've decided to work on the first and, um,
00:46:05
Speaker
And so when we work on the first, well, first of all, I'll say, is that feel OK still, or would you like to work on the worst? And so we'll work on the first. And so what we do is I want to start activating their brain. And so there's a pattern that we do, and it is a purposeful thing. So you might see your therapist with a script, especially if they're newly trained. I've done this for years, so I don't have the script, but it's
00:46:29
Speaker
The script is normal, so they don't have to feel weird. But typically, what we do is we want, OK, here's the memory. Now, I want you to grab an image. And in this day and age, back in the day when we're trained, it's like, take a photograph in your mind of what it looks like. I said, take a screenshot of what it looks like in your mind.
00:46:47
Speaker
And like of the worst part. And so then we talk about what, when you think about that image, what is a negative thought or a cognition about yourself, negative belief. And then we move on to what is it that you want to believe about yourself when you think about this image now? And so then they can create it. If not, we give them a cheat sheet, you know, because it can be hard to find one.
00:47:10
Speaker
And then we go on to tell me with that positive thought, you know, how true does that actually feel to you? Not how you think it, you know, how you think it is, but how do you, you know, how true does it feel from one to seven? Seven be most true. And then we move on to the negative belief and how you feel. What are the emotions that come up when you think about the negative belief?
00:47:34
Speaker
And then we move on. So what we're doing is activating right brain, left brain, right brain, left brain by asking these questions. Then we move on to, you know, how distressing is this from zero to 10? And then we move on to where you feel in your body. And then we just let them know, like, we want you not to go back in time. We do not want you to have to relive this. So
00:47:59
Speaker
What you want to do is maybe sit in a car and look out the window and notice these images, memories or emotions, you know, or watch it on a movie screen and distance yourself a bit because we want them to have one foot in the present, one foot in the past, right?
00:48:14
Speaker
And so I just help them know like, and also you have control. Many people, especially our left brain intellectuals, high achievers, I'm one of those at times where it's very hard for us to get in, to know that we do have control. You do have control. This is not hypnosis. That when we walk into this reprocessing,
00:48:38
Speaker
Um, this is time for you to say, okay, I'm going to allow myself to just notice and notice these things. But if something creeps up, I'm not ready for, I get to have control and put that away. And I also get to control. We want them to, you know, they're welcome to stop. Clients can stop anytime if they need a break or they need to be done for the day.
00:48:58
Speaker
And because any work is work, you know, and so no matter where like let's not shame them, you know But that's basically it we we get them activated. I tell them those things and then we move into Okay, I just want you to notice this image the thoughts the negative thoughts so you're you know thinking what you're feeling in your body the emotions and
00:49:21
Speaker
And just be curious, and I'm gonna stop every once in a while to check in to see what you're noticing. And then we have the buzzers, or I have a light bar, because yeah, I was getting the tennis elbow, or I have them do like a butterfly hug. That's what I do for online EMDR, because that is possible. It works just as great. Yeah, that's a really good point to make, that for anybody listening, I do, I've done, especially because of COVID, we had to get used to it, right? Like I've done a ton of EMDR.
00:49:50
Speaker
telehealth and that's the way you do it is you kind of crisscross your arms over your chest like you're giving yourself a hug almost and you tap right underneath your collarbone just in that and we're watching you as you do it so we can tell you make little suggestions about your pace whether it's go a little bit faster or slow down just a little bit so it's totally doable virtually. Yes yeah and and that's basically it so we check in every once in a while just to hear how the brain is processing so we're listening to
00:50:18
Speaker
And actually, the beautiful thing about EMDR is you don't even have to talk. There are things that have happened that you don't feel like you want to talk about. You can even just let us know whether it's positive, distressing, or neutral. We just need to know the flow of where your brain's taking you, or if you're getting stuck, how we can help you get unstuck. Or if you're starting to kind of numb out, we need to know that, and we help you take a jelly rancher.
00:50:46
Speaker
But then we're able to lead you into the end, and that's when we install that positive thought. After you have zero distress of the memory, we do installation of that positive belief, and sometimes it changes and it's even better, which is cool. And sometimes it's great, it's the same one, and I feel it. And then we move on to a body scan to make sure all the energy and tension is out of that
00:51:13
Speaker
The body from that memory and then it's cleared and we'll check on it next session just to make sure but That's what to expect during a reprocessing session typically. Yeah Just to give some more So to get some like meat to it. So if I were to use the example of I'm having anxiety about
00:51:38
Speaker
Maybe I have a job where I have to do presentations or something like that, and I'm having a lot of anxiety about it. And during the treatment planning phase, we realized that when I was in sixth grade, I tripped in front of the whole school on stage and got laughed at. So if that's a memory that we're reprocessing. One of the things that I'll notice is that when you first start reprocessing it, you remember it the way that you experienced it.
00:52:02
Speaker
And so if I have to name the emotion, I'm gonna say I'm anxious, I'm embarrassed, I'm feeling some shame maybe. And then once you start processing through the memory, as that emotion starts to fade a little bit, what you usually recognize is an emotion underneath that. And so people might say something like, actually, you know what, I'm really angry because I realized that my friend was laughing.
00:52:29
Speaker
And it wasn't just people at school that I didn't know. I'm really angry because my friend was laughing at me. So then you have to process and filter through that whole emotion. And then it might be, I'm not so much angry anymore as I am just really sad for my younger self. I'm really sad because that like wrecked the rest of the school year for me.
00:52:47
Speaker
And then you process through that a little bit more and maybe you come up with another emotion. So it's almost like your brain is filtering through and untangling this ball of like yarn that has been all these different emotions attached to each other and you start to pull them out one by one. Okay, so if I'm not feeling the anxiety so much and the embarrassment, I'm feeling the anger at my friend. But if I'm not really feeling that, then I'm feeling something else.
00:53:11
Speaker
And then by the end of the session, what I've noticed is that most people will start to say after 20 or 30 minutes of processing sometimes, they just get to the place of saying, everything feels fuzzy. I can't even really put my finger on an emotion anymore. And that's what you want is because when you're thinking back on an old memory, it should be hard to access a clear emotion about things, right?
00:53:34
Speaker
And so that's also probably where a little bit of like fatigue is coming in because this is like a mental marathon
Post-EMDR Processing
00:53:40
Speaker
too. Like you're filtering through so many really different heavy emotions. So for a lot of times by the end of the session, you'll feel a little bit fuzzy, a little bit drained, but you'll always have a sense of it just doesn't feel like it did before.
00:53:54
Speaker
and it feel and then another really cool thing is that as you go to sleep that night your brain is going to go back into a REM cycle so you're going to process through this memory even more even if you're not dreaming about it or anything like that.
00:54:06
Speaker
you continue to process it so the next day or a few days later it gets more and more distant so for most people they look back on it and they can say yeah that sucked but it was okay and you have a little bit more of the logic is able to come in which is people probably didn't remember it the next year
00:54:24
Speaker
Right. My friend probably felt peer pressure because I do know that she genuinely loved me. So I'm not really mad at her anymore. Like you have like a different, you start to look at it through a different lens and it doesn't feel like this horribly embarrassing thing that happened. And again, this is a small example, but it wasn't small to that little girl when she experienced it. That was mortifying to her, you know? Right. Yeah, exactly. So it's,
00:54:50
Speaker
It's amazing to see that process as a therapist when they're doing the work. And I know a lot of people think, oh, you know, when I do EMDR, I'm not going to expect like hard, like, you know, it can get hard before it gets better. We're going to find it, you know, tapping into things you haven't tapped in for a long time can be a little difficult, but it doesn't have to be overwhelming. We have ways to help with that.
00:55:15
Speaker
And yeah, to see the movement, and it's almost like sometimes I see the movement of grief. If grief is finally happening, and so I work, we do work with women in grief as well, you know, of any sort really. And so it's amazing to help because grief is a natural process that will
00:55:36
Speaker
happen naturally, but sometimes it gets stuck too. And so we can go back to the eight year old and help her finally grieve through that, like that whole year she missed because of the embarrassment. And also you can see women who are like,
00:55:54
Speaker
I finally can put that behind. I understand I have compassion maybe for that person as well. Um, doesn't make it okay, but I have that understanding now and I'm actually, and we don't push this, but you know, I don't push forgiveness. I let the process happen, but a lot of times they're able to say, I can let that go now. I can give all that yuck and not think about it and for myself and let it go and potentially like,
00:56:20
Speaker
They do end up forgiving and moving on. And forgiveness is a whole different thing. There's so many myths attached to it. But it is a beautiful process. So yeah.
Encouragement to Experience EMDR
00:56:33
Speaker
Thank you so much for that. That is so good. I feel like we probably could spend the rest of the day just sharing examples and how healing this process has been.
00:56:45
Speaker
I just encourage everybody to give it a try. Like I don't think that I've met someone yet that has said EMDR just didn't have any kind of shift for me. Yeah. So before we close out today, my final question is one that I ask everybody. And I think it's a really, I ask it I think because I want more people to be asking themselves this question. So I'm hoping that hearing some therapist and mental health professionals answer it for themselves. I'm hoping that people will start to ask themselves this too.
00:57:14
Speaker
If you could go back to your younger self at any point in time and just give her a piece of advice, what would that be? Oh, see this, my parts work is going to come through, but you know, um, I've been a therapist myself with a lot of trauma. Um, and I totally would go back and tell her that she is loved. She is worthy and she has a purpose.
00:57:42
Speaker
I know that's more than one thing, but that, and then she's chosen. Um, you know, we all are. And for her to know that, you know, would be so helpful probably for her in those moments. Um, so yeah, I think that's so good. And I think that, um,
00:58:01
Speaker
The answer to those questions are always for our younger self, but it's always for us too, because you realize how much that has become something that you needed and something that you can finally believe for yourself, that you're chosen, that you're loved, that you're worthy. I love that so much. Yes, and I've had EMDR work myself, so that's where I can get it from.
00:58:22
Speaker
That's a good note to end on. Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for being here. This was just an awesome conversation. And before we close out, tell people where they can find you. I'm going to put it in the show notes, all of your information. But do you have a social media or a blog or anything like that where people can find you? Sure. I'm on Facebook currently. I'm going to stretch out soon to other ones. But Jeremiah Counseling, as well as www.jeremiahcounseling.com. We're in Lawrenceville, Georgia.
00:58:52
Speaker
Yeah, you can find me there and find my two counselors who are also EMDR trained. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. This is such a great conversation. Hope everyone has a good day.
00:59:08
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Outside of Session. Remember, while I am a licensed therapist, this podcast is not a substitute for individual therapy. The contents of this episode are for educational and entertainment purposes only. If you are having a mental health emergency, please dial 911 for immediate assistance or dial 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline.