Hello and welcome back to the EMDR doctor podcast. I'm Dr Caroline Lloyd.
Today I am going to address one of the questions I get so often - what can i do to prepare for EMDR, how can I make sure that I get it right,
And I understand why this comes up - not only are you paying for a service so you want to get the most out of it, but we want to heal quickly, we want it all to happen today if not yesterday. We want to be free of that pain right now. Also for some people, there is a bit of a degree of perfectionism here - I like to get things right in my life, I like to do my tax right, i like to drive right, I like to be a good citizen and treat other people right, and I really want to get EMDR right. If I mess it up something bad might happen. Or my therapist may not like me. And then I won't get the help that I need.
So first up, in doing EMDR with your therapist, there is no right, just like there is no wrong. Its not good or bad to do EMDR a certain way, people are just different. Aldi's different, ie good different. Everyone is an individual, and no two sessions of EMDR look the same. And today, you might do EMDR a little differently to tomorrow, in fact I can guarantee, you will do EMDR differently tomorrow, even on the same target, because something will have shifted or changed about how your brain thinks about that target. So we can't ever replicate a session, even if it was the most significant session ever, even if we tried.
What might be sitting behind this is some uncertainty about EMDR - it is a different sort of therapy - we are all used to talk therapy, and this maybe seems easier because we all talk every day, so talk therapy is just about doing what comes naturally and doesn't feel so different to having a cup of tea with someone. Of course talk therapy is not just chat, but I think you will get my point. I guess people may think of EMDR as being a more technical skill than other therapies, because we use the eye movements or the tapping or buzzes or whatever. But EMDR is not about mastering a skill, or getting good at something, it is more about letting things happen.
So if you really wanted to practice something to get ready for EMDR, maybe there might be an opportunity to practice letting your thoughts happen. Now this is not really mindfulness, although it is possibly related. It is about loosening control over your thoughts, about letting them go anywhere. In our lives, especially when we have significant trauma, we are often obsessed with controlling our thoughts, about not letting our thoughts visit the painful places. We use lots of (often subconscious) strategies to avoid our painful memories. We may overwork, or worry about the future, or turn to games or scrolling to avoid our thoughts. EMDR is a time when we need to allow our thoughts to go wherever they want to go.
And if that feels really scary, just know that the therapist is there to guide you and support you, that we as therapists, won't let it all get too much, that one of our main jobs is to hold the space for you, to let you think what you need to think, let you feel what you need to feel, and support you through that process so that by the end of it, you get to the other side, and having done the work, with the bilateral stimulation, the eye movements etc, all those thoughts and feelings and body sensations will no longer need to be there, they will have worked themselves out and the memory will be resolved.
Now a word about practising allowing your thoughts to go wherever they need to. For some people, this will be too hard. And this is absolutely not a failure, it is just where you are as a result of the trauma you have experienced. So if you try this allowing process, and it is very distressing or dysregulating, then stop, just know that this home practice is not for you at the moment and that it won't interfere with us being able to do EMDR together, it just gives us an indication of what strategies and level of titration we need to do for you as an individual. Everyone is their own beautiful selves, and as EMDR therapists, we honour and respect this.
Now I want to talk a little bit about preparation for EMDR. In the EMDR world there is a lot of talk about doing the 'right' in inverted commas, preparation before starting EMDR. So we have a few exercises that are often used prior to starting EMDR, including a container exercise, calm place, some people use a safe place exercise, and other attachment focused resources like a loving figure or protective figure and a few other things.
Now in my book, you do not have to practice these at home before I will start EDMR with you. I like to tell people that with EMDR there is no homework, the work is done in session. But if these exercises help you feel better, calmer, more regulated in between session, then by all means, do them. But you do not have to 'get these right' before I start EMDR memory reprocessing with you. We as therapists, can easily titrate the work, to minimise overwhelm and distress. We can start with a small target or even a fragment of a target, and we can use other techniques to keep things focused and not dive in the deep end.
When we start EMDR processing, we know the starting point, but we don't know the end point, we don't know what the destination will be, until we get there. So you can't get it wrong, you can't mess it up, the whole process is just one of discovery, processing and healing, and revealing more of who you are underneath the layers of trauma, getting closer to who you are, as we peel back the trauma.
And the same applies with dissociation. I did a podcast about dissociation a few months ago, episode 18, so if you would like more info about dissociation then head over to that episode, but just briefly now, I will mention, that EMDR is still very possible with dissociation, it is your brains amazing adaptive technique to avoid the worst of the distress, and we honour that, and can work gradually in from the outside, start gently, relieve some of the smaller or more recent painful memories and lessen that trauma load, so there is less need for the dissociation, and build capacity as we go. You don't have to have all the capacity before we start, that is kind of putting the cart before the horse.
so for me in my practice, I don't demand that you are good at any particular skill or exercise before I work with you, it is about meeting you where you are at, and giving you the best chance at receiving your distress or trauma from right where you are now.
So there is no need to delay EMDR until any certain point in time, now is the best time to address your trauma and to move forward out of your pain and in to a better future. It is never too late, and it is never too early, to start your trauma therapy. Your therapist will meet you where you're at, and help you every step of the way. There is no perfect way, there is no 'right' way to process your personal memories, there is just your way.
So I hope that has been helpful, I hope you have a great week, until next time, bye for now.
