How EMDR Helped Me Become Peaceful with My Past…But Left Me With Me in The Present.
There’s a wellness tool for just about everything these days.
Flotation tanks, cold plunges, CBT, DBT, gratitude journals, breathwork, yoga, journalling, medication, meditation, crystals, herbal, holistic, homeopathic... you name it, I’ve tried it. Some worked a little, some not at all, and most just reminded me how deeply annoying it is to try and meditate when your brain is busy replaying a drunk argument from 2016 while worrying if your Hello Fresh delivery driver thinks you’re rude.
We’re in a strange time where mental health support is both everywhere and nowhere. There are 8-week online CBT courses that you work through, a glaring screen telling you to “challenge your thoughts,” then there’s the 18-month waitlist for NHS talking therapy, by which time your trauma has developed its own trauma .You could take a mindful walk sure, but when you’re brain is buzzing and your body is aching, you won’t stop to notice the beauty nature can provide you because you’re too busy thinking about whether or not the walk is going to take the edge off.
I say this with full awareness that I’ve been incredibly lucky. I could afford and was able to find a private therapist I trusted. And after a few years of dipping in and out of talking therapy, she suggested something new: EMDR.
Or EDMR as I kept calling it, perhaps I was getting confused with the Electronic Dance Music Raves I tried on like a new outfit in my early twenties because I hadn’t figured out there were other ways to move through pain and depression without rave music, cryptic guys and class A’s.
My therapist shared that she’d recently trained in it and had it herself. Swore by it. So I did what most people do when presented with something to ease suffering. Sign. Me. Up.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. It’s a trauma therapy developed in the late ‘80s that helps your brain ‘reprocess’ traumatic memories using bilateral stimulation, often through side-to-side eye movements or tapping. It’s used for PTSD, anxiety, panic disorders and other deeply embedded “stuff.”
So I gave it a go.
We sat in a wooden cabin in a field, next to an off-grid gym. While those guys lifted weights, I was gazing at a baton-like object with a red tip, sort of like a large match stick. I felt like a Labrador in training, eyes locked on her hand as it moved side to side. That’s literally what happens and at first, I imagine like many, I was sceptical...What even is this? Why didn’t I just sign up to the gym like the normal people next door?
She’d pause every so often to ask, “What came up for you then?”
At first, not a lot. I would say things like, I can hear the low bass of Electronic Dance Music in the Gym. Or I’d notice the temperature of the room. Or that the bi-lateral movement was actually making me feel quite calm and present. Was I doing it right?
After a few rounds, my therapist began to ask me questions that related to the past. Later I figured out that my noticing of external occurrences was a distraction.
This initial resistance was my brain working even when I wasn’t aware of it. It was scanning memories, slowly unboxing years of lived experience.
What unfolded over the next three sessions, I can only describe as the feeling of packing away a toddler’s toys. Every last Lego brick, tiny plastic animal, rogue wheel and plastic dinosaur; neatly and with care. And then, just as you step back to admire the order, they come over and tip the entire thing out onto the floor again.
Before you start EMDR, you are asked to score things: distress levels, negative beliefs, body sensations. Initially, I scored highly - which I’ve always pretty been good at, by the way. Gold star for the old trauma response you might say.
It was during the second session that the memories came flooding in, almost like an old film projector flickering through different scenes.
Care Bears….Pokemon cards.... Those awful Christmases…the smell of my teenage bedroom. MSN. Fear. My brothers and I glued to the same film for the hundredth time. Flashbacks to loudness. Slamming doors. Smashing…slapping…shoving…a holiday in Spain. Being told I was too sensitive. Being told to get a grip. Not understanding the phrase as a young girl. Mum’s ex…Praying to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in. Intimidating school teachers…my ex…my barbie typewriter…hurting my knee…trying to cartwheel.
It wasn’t chronological. It was chaos in it’s purest form. But during these sessions, the chaos did start to feel more calm and ordered in my head. Weirdly, it felt like it was working through the years. From childhood to teenage heartbreak to 20-something spirals. What was interesting was that what I was experiencing was all the past. At no point during the exercise was I thinking ‘’Hmm what shall I have for dinner tonight?’’
I wanted to keep going. I didn’t want to stop. There were points where I felt deeply sad. I cried. But for once, the crying wasn’t heavy and stuck. It moved through. It was upsetting, yes. But it also felt like a purge, it felt like I was releasing some seriously stuck stuff.
My therapist described it as moving things from the ‘archived’ folder, back to the inbox, so the email could be read, processed and re-organised. The re-organisation came through questions she would ask me and the repetition of some ‘affirmations’ we’d agreed on in the earlier sessions.
I took the analogy further by later organising the memories - I’d unsubscribe, I’d mark it as ‘safe’ or I’d just sling it in junk, cause I didn’t need to re-read it again.
By the third session, I started believing the new messages, ones I’d never thought to say to myself.
I am safe.
I am not a burden.
I can recognise that this might not be ‘my stuff.’
These messages were huge for me, they helped me shift things I’d been holding on to for a very long time.
So… Did it work?
Yes. Where I'd initially been scoring 8’s and 9’s, some feelings were as low as 1.
I’m not claiming I’m healed or levitating. But something has definitely softened. The past doesn’t grab me by the throat like it used to. I don’t live from that place anymore. And I’ve realised that’s both a gift…and a bit terrifying.
Because once the past no longer defines your present, you’re left with you. And what a bloody trip that is.
Would I recommend it? Absolutely yes, but with a caveat.
EMDR, for me, has been one of the best tools to bring me closer to me. Not the me shaped by the complex and chaotic tapestry of the past, but the me that’s been waiting beneath it all.
These days, I still use bilateral stimulation from YouTube when I need a reminder of safety. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I remember something small and strange. But amongst the many things that I have tried and trialled, I do feel present. And for someone who’s lived a lot of life in the past… that feels big. My brain is no longer grasping at things from the past that may determine what I am doing in the present. The challenge in this now is that I am learning to discern how I am the creator of my own reality, and I used to use the past as an excuse when things weren’t going my way.
Now the work is in the now. The patterns are quieter, but honestly? There’s no villain anymore, which means I can’t pin things on the past. I have to face myself and, hopefully, offer her some grace.
