Episode 112
EMDR: Facing Trauma and Forging Change

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Description

Jason Friesema sits with Madeline Frey, our clinical operations and compliance specialist, to speak on a crucial topic: trauma and EMDR therapy. Through sharing personal experiences practicing EMDR and even personal success stories. This is an important topic for us to shine a light on, and we welcome all questions and comments!

Talking Points

1. Intro to Maddie (0:25)
   
2. What is trauma (1:00)
   
3. What is body offline (1:55)
   
4. Big ’T’ trauma (6:42)
   
5. Humans are built to survive (10:50)
   
6. EMDR (15:10)
   
7. Jasons EMDR story (19:40)
   
8. Bilateral stimulation (25:15)
   
9. Final thoughts (32:05)
   

Quotes

“Your brain comes to some conclusion, and it has its mind made up about something, but your body is telling a whole different story. When your brain and your body aren’t telling the same story, that’s how I identify trauma.”

-Madeline Frey, clinical operations and compliance specialist.

Episode Transcripts

Episode -112- Transcripts

[Music] hello welcome to another episode of Finding Peaks I’m Jason frma joining me today is Maddie fry the clinical operations and compliance specialist here at Peaks which is um I think a pretty cool title uh it’s it’s newish it’s newish yeah I am doing some administrative stuff I’m doing some therapy stuff I’m doing um all the things in between so yeah just wearing a lot of different hats these days yeah so you get a long title when you wear a lot of hats requires a lot of words to describe your title anyway what we’re here to talk about today uh is we’re going to talk about trauma and then uh the utilization of EMDR um which I know you are trained in and and passionate about but let’s start with with trauma what I think it seems obvious but maybe what is trauma yeah um so many different directions that I could go with okay yeah pick one yeah but I think what tends to resonate with people the most is when I say that your brain comes to some conclusion and it and it has its mind made up about something um but your body is telling a whole different story um when your brain and your body aren’t telling the same story that’s how I identify trauma and that seems to resonate with a lot of people um because it takes away the idea that um it has to to be this amount bad or it has to be um this shocking of a story in order for it to be something difficult that you’ve been through but a lot of us resonate with the idea that sometimes we just can’t get our bodies online with what our brain thinks and I think that’s how I would boil it down okay yeah what what do you think a body offline is like what what would that mean like if somebody’s kind of sitting in their trauma tons of different things honestly like I think that’s when we see people disregulated just not showing up like themselves or or finding themselves um doing things that maybe then they regret or look back on and say like that wasn’t what I intended I just um I wasn’t in a place to be like using my full mind and my full personality to to walk through that situation and um I mean when I think about the the clients that I’ve worked with that’s when people have a distance from who they mean to be um whether that’s how their mental health shows up or whether that’s how substance you shows up or whatever that is um most people are just trying to stop that feeling of disregulation or Panic or to to get distance from it or something along those lines but um I think that’s how I recognize it at least with the people that we have here yeah yeah I mean I I think I probably shared this with you before and and maybe we’ve even talked about on the on this podcast but um I did a lot of work with vets coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan and I was a newly trained dmdr therapist at the time and I don’t think I knew that oh okay good breaking news for you um but yeah like when when these guys were coming back like I what I how I would describe it to them would be it’s like they have a foot still in Iraq or in Afghanistan and then a foot here and that seemed to resonate with those guys a lot and and they they would know they’re in Colorado Springs driving an I25 and but if there was a box on the road they were so used to kind of having to avoid um improvised explosive devices and that that they would like swerve around uh you know in their pickup or something thinking part of them thinking that they were still kind of back uh in in theater if you will and yeah and so you know a lot of the focus was on how do we kind of bring the feet back together in in this present moment yeah um and and so uh the other thing that you mentioned that I thought of is that I think one of the subtle indicators of trauma too is people have difficulty in interpersonal relationships right right like trauma involves doing a lot of avoidance of triggers and you know maybe having nightmares and flashbacks and that sort of thing um for what we call Capital T trauma we can get to that later but um kind of a more subtle feature is just some difficulty in relationships and I think um you know what you described as being out of accordance with one’s body and uh was it body and mind body yeah they just don’t agree line up where there’s that in congruency or you know for me the foot here foot somewhere else um it makes interpersonal relationships pretty challenging I think and um I don’t think people think about that as a a part of a trauma reaction as well and families experienced that too where it’s like I just can’t seem to connect with my loved one for some reason yeah well and then I think about um the the whole avoidance of triggers that you were talking about especially if it’s relational trauma or um kind of more along the lines of emotional trauma people will get pretty good at finding out how to not get hurt again and so a lot of times that creates distance from people in relationships but then one of the things that I remember at least learning in in some of the trauma courses that I took was some of the protective factors for actually getting through something traumatic or healing from something traumatic is relationships and then spirituality also is a big part of it but both of those components if you can figure out how to make those work for you and and use what you’ve learned to keep yourself safe um but it usually does require a fair amount of courage to actually address the thing because people turn turns out they don’t like being in pain yeah at all for the most part yeah yeah and that’s a pretty um that’s a pretty effective tool like who does want to be in pain tells us to get away from something it’s it’s kind of its job um the issue is obviously when you’re safe again but the pain is still telling you to avoid that’s what gets tricky and I do I think you mentioned something too that I that I um want to highlight is that people that have been through a lot of trauma they do tend to begin to shrink their world down to to stay safe pushing people away pushing activities away and and lives can end up really kind of small and um very contained as a part of a trauma response as well yeah can you can you talk then I I kind of use the um euphemistic term capital T trauma versus Little T trauma um can you maybe talk about that a little more yeah I kind of wish I had a whiteboard here let I’m like tapping into the therapist for everyone look here maybe in post production cver could put one up for you you just trace my fingers give me one of those like glow sticks and do a long exposure yeah so if I was to draw just the capital T right like you would see the shape of the capital T and it’s and it it’s the shape that it is but I could also draw the shape of a capital T with a bunch of little tiny T’s and those things together would create similar impact right like same um avoid strategies same feelings of disregulation same feelings of uncertainty and then low self-esteem too but notice that it’s it’s either that one big thing um or for some people a lot of big things or a series of small things over time that add up to the same impact of the big thing so that’s kind of what I mean whenever people sometimes fight me on the idea of I I think that’s traumatic what you’ve been through and they’re like no it’s not yeah and I’m like well how do you show up because of it and and they start talking about all of these things things that aren’t choices that they’re making that it’s not something that they’re doing intentionally it’s not in line with their values but they just can’t seem to get away from it it’s it’s kind of like it it just has impact no matter what you think about it and most of us kind of let the Judgment of that get in the way but when we talk about little tea traumas sometimes those can be um yeah just like a series of I usually think relational things over time um that kind of Stack up that give you a certain amount of expectations of what you can get especially from close intimate relationships and then when I think about Big T trauma I think sometimes single incident um some of the things that you would probably more easily associate with trauma um but I I also jokingly say to my clients whenever I’m working with them that I think of trauma work as the Wild Wild West like there’s just there’s no rules everyone’s just out here kind of getting by and you just never know what to expect and so I think that we have ways of think thinking about it without being able to say it’s exactly this or it’s exactly that or because of this this is going to happen it just doesn’t work that way so those are just some of the things that I think about in order to conceptualize what I’m what I’m looking at and how to explain it to someone I I really like that um the metaphor of the teas actually and I can’t wait to see what cver does with it but um but in all seriousness like what I thought about when you were saying that is um I used to do um some like personal finance coaching with people and and um why am I learning a lot about you right now well I’m just letting my guard down and uh and basically you know obviously there are some people that have like a big hospital bill from a big event that kind of disrupts their budget or you know maybe in out outrageous student loans or something like that but for most people the things that break their budget are the daily trips to Starbucks and then the McDonald’s and then um you know a little shop here a little Amazon like that analogy yeah and and uh I’ve heard it called Death By A Thousand Cuts right and where it’s um where it isn’t there’s no one cut that did the damage if you will but it is kind of that cumulative effect of like you can I remember I had a guy um in one of my classes that was an airline pilot actually and so um one of our tasks was to write down everything you spend in a month and he like came to me and he’s like I am eating my money and he had spent well over $1,000 on on eating out in a month just but didn’t think about it like it never felt never hit like a this is disrupting my um budget and I think in a similar way uh when we bring this back to trauma it’s like okay yeah to your point like okay we can’t we don’t have the big thing the big event that happened um in that traumatic experience but to your point like little elements of um neglect as a kid or little moments where your needs aren’t being met but that being kind of consistent over time um can be that death by Thousand Cuts if you will totally well and and I always think about just like the human spirit and like how people are just so geared to get by no matter what the cost um so here’s a story that I like to share okay this is um are you familiar with the Donner Party yeah okay so yeah there’s a book getting morbid all it is just a little bit um hang with me so there’s a book called uh the indifferent stars above and basically in this book it just tells the story from a first-person perspective of the Doner party so basically what happens is it’s these people going West on the Oregon Trail and they leave a little bit too late in the season and they’re heading west sorry I hit your microphone sorry CER they they leave just a little bit too late in the season and they are crossing the Sierra Nevadas in covered wagons and you’ve got families you’ve got men you’ve got women you’ve got babies and so essentially what happen happens is they get hit by an early season snowstorm that traps them in the Sierra Nevadas so Q this just very famous story where they essentially have to turn to cannibalism in order to survive and um when I look at hang with me I promise I’m going you just casually said it but yes that is it’s just such a good book I love it and basically what happened is um when you look at who actually survived who got through that it was mostly women that survived from it and something that I learned just from like my own experiences in the outdoors is that um women have reproductive organs that sit in the center of their bodies and so women are more likely to experience hypothermia because their bodies are really good at taking all the blood from your extremities and bringing it into your core but when you’re in a life or death situation it’s your core temperature that keeps you alive right whereas men are more likely to just die from the situation or from the a low core temperature because their bodies aren’t as good at bringing blood into the center and so most of the survivors were women so I think that story is fascinating because talk about the worst condition that you could possibly be in as a person something that like is is truly a life or death situation and there’s all these different things that are true about the human body that are meant just to kind of keep you moving forward and I think about especially women in in that perspective it’s like we could lose a finger we could lose a limb but but at least you’re alive and I like to think about human tenacity like the human Spirit as kind of like that we’re just geared to survive we’re we’re geared to keep moving forward at no matter the cost so that’s kind of how I think of trauma in that way because there’s things that are going to happen to us there’s narratives that we’re going to keep about ourselves other people or the world that are going to be like losing limbs that are going to be pretty detrimental to how you keep moving forward but if we’re geared to survive we’re geared to survive and so the body basically says what do we not need in order to stay safe great we can lose a finger like that’s fine we’re just going to keep moving forward um so there is toughness in the human spirit that just says like I’m just nothing can break me but at what cost right so it’s it’s the cost of that because most of us aren’t walking through a snowstorm most of us aren’t in a covered wagon Crossing these SE Nevadas so what is that for each of us and what have been and the injuries along the way that you just had to kind of take to keep moving forward um and how do you change those narratives for yourself in order to better support like a body that’s able to to live and feel regulated in this world and in relationships yeah like it in a way um if you can if you can kind of access that gratitude like okay I took you know maybe I lost a finger or whatever in this metaphor but like you know maybe I took my hits along the way but but it’s all an indication that I’ve survived like I’m geared for survival yeah that’s exactly right sorry if that’s too dark for this pod no I think um remind me to never go backpacking with you it’s just like getting a little hungry um so let’s talk about excuse me one um one of the treatment modalities for trauma is EMDR I movement desensitization and reprocessing so with with EMDR well yeah where do come from what’s the what’s the origin story just G to give you my Spiel okay Spiel away it’s why you’re here yeah which you are as well EMDR trained and I haven’t you know been able to actually see you do this or talk with you much about this that’ll be the last part of the Show Gotcha let’s talk about my personal trauma yeah it’s bringing image to mine um so I’ll be curious to hear like how you kind of conceptualize it in a way but basically it came from the idea that um a woman was walking and thinking about difficult things and um noticed that when she would walk and move her eyes from side decide it it felt less difficult to think about um and so that kind of spurred this whole Theory this whole practice of EMDR IM movement desensitization and reprocessing that basically says when you’re incorporating bilateral stimulation so that side to side um you have better capacity to reprocess things or kind of like I was talking about earlier get your brain and your body back online where your brain can have a thought and your body doesn’t start freaking out as a result of it um yeah anything you would add to how it came about that was description I I think that’s exactly I mean that’s my understanding too is that her name was Francine Shapiro and yeah she just um yeah was just going on walks and like why do I feel better after these walks and got more and more intentional about okay what is this and I she figured out that it was this bilateral stimulation I think getting the the hemispheres of the brain to talk to one another and um that seemed to help her uh more a processed her problems that’s my understanding too yeah and I I I just get stoked about EMDR because I think it’s so cool and fair warning I could just I could ramble about this for quite some time so I’m going to try to make it concise yeah um so you know when you’re sleeping and um you heard of REM sleep random eye movement so that’s when you’re going going to have your eyes moving to side to side that’s when you’re going to um dream in those places or maybe have nightmares too kind of you were talking about with the the guys coming home from war yeah right like that is a lot of times associated with I hit a certain point in my sleep and I woke up from a nightmare so the theory is that when you’re sleeping you’re processing and when your eyes are moving side to side that’s when you’re doing that at a greater speed or with greater efficiency or something along those lines and the idea is that we’re replicating that and we’re saying how can we do that in our waking hours um but you remember how I was saying that humans are just kind of geared to survive they just have this innate capacity so think about getting like a cut on your arm or something like that and what is your skin designed to do just scab right like kind of heal itself back up um but if you got dirt or you got bacteria in that cut you know you would likely see something happen along the lines of it’s either delayed in its healing or it might get infected or it might Fester or something along those lines it’s just the healing process got stunted but the skin is naturally meant to heal itself that’s kind of how I think about our brains yeah they they are meant to heal themselves they’re meant to take the Adaptive the good information the the healthy stuff that makes you feel whole and makes you feel human and it’s that’s meant to meet the difficult things that you’ve also experienced and meant to make it easier to just kind of live with what you’ve been through um because the positive things but if the trauma exists kind of like a cut in your brain in that way it it festers or it becomes infected or whatever it is and so when we access that ability to kind of bilaterally stimulate your brain it gives it a greater chance to kind of clean out some of that that bacteria or some of that um whatever it is that’s keeping you stuck in that place um so at least those are some of the analogies that I offer with it it yeah um but then going back to the whole it feels like the Wild Wild West because I’m like that’s how I conceptualize this and some of it still does kind of feel magical in that way it’s hard to really put my finger on like this is exactly how this works and here’s how I know that people get better because of it yeah I mean I think that’s fair but what we do know is people um do get better I have I have another little story maybe you haven’t heard it maybe you have I guess we’ll see um so part of doing EMDR training is you kind of you also get to to go through EMDR at least that’s how it was when I went through the training and um I had a thing happened to me uh that I worked on an EMDR and I’m going to tell that story right now um when I was a a little bitty baby counselor um I had I was working with substance use people with substance use uh disorder and I had a a client who um I was doing his intake in my office and um he was quite fidgety couldn’t sit still um um but I did the intake and and then we left my office um I’m sure I went to get a cup of coffee if you know me that definitely happened and um when I came back to my office this client had the chair he was sitting on was flipped upside down and I’m like okay what what are you doing man and he’s like I lost my phone so we flipped the chair back over I’m like oh I’ll help you find it and I shove my hand down into the couch and come out and there’s a hypmic needle hanging out of my thumb oh my gosh um which I didn’t love uh it was not great news for me uh it was really uncomfortable um I kindly asked the guy to leave uh for obvious reasons and like it was upsetting like I didn’t know what was on the needle like you know it was obviously didn’t have a cap and it was a used needle so like it was um an unpleasant experience to say the least and um I kind of got over it right like um but what I figured out is that um I would position myself on furniture so that I would never be touching like the crack of a seat cushion or even kind of the back part of a chair or couch and but it didn’t really affect my life much like I I knew how to sit down and I would never ever ever put my hand into the into the cushion or anything like that and and so I just kind of filed it away and moved on with my life and then when the cmdr class came out they’re like okay get don’t bring up your you know deepest darkest but bring up a little trauma or um and so sure enough I bring that up and go through the EMDR and I honestly I pictured it like on a train moving by me which is can be a strategy for it and um and now like I it has no like I can search for things in a couch cushion and all that and and it’s just crazy because obviously I avoided all that because I every couch might have a hypodermic needle sure in yeah um but actually in the real world even you know there’s no hypodermic needles in my house you know like that’s just not going to happen and so going through that EMDR process um and it like the person who did that with me like it was her first time being a facilitator of EMDR like it worked really quickly yeah two pretty quick sessions and um that little medium tea not quite Capital but not quite little middle-sized tea um trauma uh Prett quickly cleared out was kind of cool yeah and and I don’t know what resource you had in that that you incorporate it into that situation so that when you think back on it you like probably also remember something else like sometimes what I tell people is I don’t I don’t know what your brain is going to do I just I trust your brain and I trust human nature in that way that they want to get better like you want to be able to sit down and not feel like wey of whatever is in the Cracks around cions that’s exactly right and and you know obviously like in the class like we didn’t travel through any kind of channels of trauma if you will but like I don’t know it just it was a really cool and good experience and made me an early believer in in the process for sure because I noticed the actual result of it um so matd talk through like okay so we talked about um bilateral stimulation or whatever but practically what what is EMDR what what do you do you do with your
hands um yeah so there’s a lot of different ways that you can approach it honestly and and most most people will find something that either fits the therapist the best or fits the client the best and basically where I’ll start is something that is more on the positive end for someone so I I want them to know that if they’re going to dip a toe into what’s hard that they’re going to be able to get out of the pool so if we start with you know the worst and the scariest it’s probably going to be really overwhelming to begin with but we start with what we call resourcing and so it’s like you know how’s your breath work can you notice things in your body are you I call it somatically connected like do you do you have the capacity to feel a feeling and notice how it affects your body um everyone has the capacity to do that it’s just a matter of how familiar we are with it and so a lot of times we might have to spend some time kind of working there and saying like can you regulate yourself can you notice what it feels like physically to feel good and regulated versus disregulated and kind of stuck in that negative pattern there’s a couple different ways that we do that one of them is the the safe place activity where we um introduce the bilateral stimulation and basically say we’re going to practice this at a much more slow maybe kind of shorter pace and I’m going to have you think of a positive place and we’re going to run through the the senses connected with that so things you can see things you can touch things you can smell and usually when someone finds a good spot it’s like they feel calmer or they they notice the tension kind of leaves their body in a way so we kind of play with that for a session or two and just see how effective it is because we want to find something that’s effective for the person before we have them kind of jump into the pool um yeah anything you would add to the resourcing process so talk about oh no not to the resources okay so I was just going to tell ask you to talk about like bilateral stimulation and what is that yeah practically like there’s a variety of ways that people achieve that but yeah yeah so obviously as the name implies eye movement desensitization reprocessing the initial method of practicing This was um a therapist or practitioner holding up fingers and having you follow with the eyes um it’s effective in that way and it definitely works and there’s people that I know that that still do that but I think at least for me what I found is that my eyes would get dry or I would start feeling tension in my eyes and I was focusing more on that than what I was thinking about and so I I don’t love that as a therapist or a client it also feels kind of weird to put my fingers in someone’s face and say like okay here here’s my hand your shoulder gets tired like all kinds of problems yeah um and then there’s um some people will do tapping or something along those lines that they call like a butterfly hug where you like go here and just trying to hit my microphone H the microphone yeah um and then um there’s a light bar out there that um does the same eye movement but instead of the therapist putting their hand up the client just follows the eyes um I actually did bring my theer tappers with me and this is my favorite um so I’m just going to show what’s what’s all in it so you’ve got this little container or box thing um and that’s what you would plug these guys into I had a client recently call these pickles okay yeah he plugged the pickles into and most people will ask me um do these Shock Me and the answer is no they just like little buzzers I think people associate it with like um like old school like electroshock therapy and it’s nothing like that not like that at all so basically I just turn it on and you can can feel them kind of Al it’s like your phone vibrating right like it’s like atic M for sure yeah it just feels like a very soft gentle vibration and I can change like the speed I can change the intensity I can change the pause in between them and there might be different reasons why I might change those for the client um sometimes it can help kind of increase that processing speed or help them kind of get over the hump of something difficult if if the stimulation changes but this is my favorite because I think it lets people just kind of be passive and and receive the bilateral stimulation versus having to create it themselves or for them to focus on me and what I’m doing it’s just a flick of a switch for me yeah so yeah what did what did you use yeah old I I would have people put a pillow on their lap and then I would tap with my own fingers the backs of their hands oh yeah um which that uh that was a little that was somewhat how I was trained but then like when you’re doing that you’re also bilaterally stimulating yourself cuz you’re like tap tap tap tap so I’d really like focus on things and keep myself grounded because otherwise I can just like be wandering off in into my own land so and actually have a story about that I when I first started doing that on that little box there’s lights that go back and forth that tell me which one’s lit up and how long it’s buzzing for and I remember counting cuz I want to make sure that I’m you know giving the right dose or whatever and you know making sure that the person is you know getting as much as they’re supposed to and I was having these vivid dreams and I would wake up exhausted I remember just passively mentioning that to someone on staff one day and she goes are you watching the lights on your theater and I was like yes I am and she goes stop don’t do that because it’s going to it’s going to activate something in you that’s like that that’s exactly right that is so funny that is funny and I I do think um like kind of the the edges of EMDR too is like it’s a it’s a the clients always have uh the brake pedal is how I would say like they can always interrupt it totally um it’s so important for people to feel safe and like they’re in control because that often is what kind of traumatic events cause you to feel out of control like the little story I told about the needle in my chair like that is way beyond my control and like um so kind of having a safe space where you’re like okay I can I’ll only go as far as I as I want to I always have the opportunity to hit the brakes and be like no I’m getting too stimulated or too flooded yeah um and I think that that part matters a lot and um and I think you know it isn’t it’s sometimes as clinicians I think it’s helpful to like give little prompts like I it it’d just be best if we kept going but if you want to stop we can stop but almost through this yeah ex yeah exactly um because it is there’s an element of it that is kind of exposure therapy like people like people these images come into their minds and uh like that can be stressful but um totally but giving people strategies to kind of keep walking through it I think is really helpful yeah absolutely and and that’s I think part of the informed consent part of this for me because I’ll kind of give the Spiel I’ll show the person here’s the paddles here’s the pickles right like notice that it’s not shocking you it’s a gentle buzz and I think when people have the informed consent they’re able to well part of that is then this might be really distressing right something that I was taught was um in in the EMDR training that I took was the only way through was through yeah right so it there’s no there’s no trick there’s no you can’t um you can’t really bypass it in a way and there’s been times that even when I offer that or when I say like I want you to know that this could be really difficult um some people will um you know kind of finish a session or something and say like I felt like pain in my stomach or I felt like I genuinely couldn’t catch my breath or I didn’t expect that to be so hard and that’s not true for everyone but I think that there is a certain amount of like as you’re Excavating and as you’re kind of touching those tender spots in your emotions and your memories it it it involves a bit of that kind of pain in that way but again keeping it safe making sure the person knows that it’s only what they can tolerate that that everything about their situation is safe it’s just it’s emotionally distressing and that’s the scale that we use right like I’m going to give you a scale from zero to 10 can you tell me how distressed you are right now and someone’s like this is my 10 and I’m like okay right like we’re just going to keep working until you say we’re not right and that’s and that’s my job is to make sure that that I have them that I’m able to kind of help regulate them and to help them get over the hump whether that’s we’re going to take a break or let’s stand up or let’s change how we’re doing this or who’s a positive person that you can bring into this memory for you so there’s lots of different ways that we can kind of like jump start the reprocessing process in a way um that makes it feel like they can handle being in that memory without losing a sense of who they are or where they are right like that I think that’s an important piece to just making sure that there’s safety for the person yeah I think I think that’s so huge and so kind of as we wrap up the the thing like I mentioned about my little story or whatever like it it often doesn’t take a ton of time right like it doesn’t take 42 sessions or three years of this usually um and all that to say like my experience too of with myself and with other people working through trauma sometimes you kind of clear things and then down the road other things come up but it doesn’t mean that I had to spend all that time in between going through therapy like just sometimes things come up um but yeah like can you talk about how expedited it can be to kind of get somebody through something that seems pretty major yeah I think um there’s something about it’s kind of let me back up I’m going to answer your question indirectly so when when you do therapy we call it talk therapy right like you’re sitting there and you’re having a conversation and sometimes you find healing by um accessing compassion for yourself or making connections and making sense of something or talking skills and and strategies with your therapist I kind of view that as like one side of therapy and then the other side of therapy is the body part of all of it and that that’s what I’m talking about when I say that your brain and your body don’t agree and so is there well this is the realm where you’re maybe not talking as much you’re not um Talk therapy no you’re not communicating really with your therapist other than what you’re experiencing and then it’s up to them in their training to kind of help kind of guide you along the way but you’re you’re just experiencing you’re just in your body and you’re noticing things as they come up and so when you’re when you’re actually like doing the thing itself you’ll notice that okay now that I’ve done a few sets of the bilateral stimulation I notice that my body doesn’t react as much when I talk about that thing or um um I never viewed it from that perspective or I I feel a little bit more zoomed out from it and now I notice that that was just a kid or I noticed that that parent really really had their own thing going on too it actually had nothing to do with me so it’s it’s kind of like stepping into that and experiencing it differently helps you then remember it differently and it doesn’t it doesn’t always like change the memory for you it I mean like I said Wild Wild West you never know exactly what’s going to happen but I think when when you feel differently about what happened or you view it differently or your body has a different response it’s a whole different kind of healing than I talked about this and I made a conclusion and I and I think I’ve made peace with that thing um and that can happen in a session right not always and there’s a lot of people that um I feel like I just get to scratch the surface with them in in in their time in our program and there’s some people that um will do a few sessions and they’ll come to me you know the next week and be like it’s still it still feels better okay it I didn’t think that this thing that I’d been holding on to for so long wouldn’t affect me in that way anymore but they’re like I keep thinking about it just to see if it still works and it does so I think that’s really interesting is so interesting because it gets you out of your head and it gets you into your experience yeah it’s yeah and and like in in my little story like it doesn’t change the memory the things still happen to me still sucked but it wasn’t I don’t feel anything like I don’t get a flood of like fear or agitation or anger at that person like I just like oh yeah that happened that was wild yeah um you’re able to kind of see it as detached from that yeah truth and it’s just okay this is just what it was exactly um so I don’t I honestly don’t feel anything in my body when I talk about that so um Maddie I just want to thank you I think this was a a lively discussion about trauma and EMDR um and the daughter party yeah
I’m glad we scripted that in uh beforehand um anyway thanks thanks you all for uh watching and uh we’ll see you [Music] soon