I’ve written previously about EMDR and the type of treatment I personally went through in my EMDR Part 1: Positive…or pure hell.
As a refresher I considered it an attempt at hypnosis, a re-wiring of the trauma event through remembering what exactly happened, at least your perception at the time. Those deep seeded memories that haunt you. Then the therapist helps you by re-visiting those events and minimizing the psychological impact and the prevalence of PTSD symptoms.
That’s my thinking anyway, if I try to capture it in a nutshell.
I have learned that 5% of these treatments may actually have a negative effect on the patient, and in my case that’s exactly what happened.
The traumatic event of the rape, the details so to speak, had been buried inside for 30 years when we started the process. Sitting in her small book-cluttered office up the small staircase off the kitchen. A comfortable overstuffed chair.
Normally the view was of trees, leaves on the ground, that surrounded their old farmhouse and property. A small deciduous forest.
For the EMDR sessions however, she had pulled the blinds and shades so when she turned off her floor lamp the room was black with darkness. The point of the darkness was to enhance the light coming from the EMDR light bar. Small dots of bright white light that moved in different directions at different times. A center focal point.
“Watch the lights closely and think about what happened.”
Once the lights stop suddenly you are asked to relate all you can, trying to work through the issues. I was to focus on these rapidly moving lights, and try to remember the events on the day of the rape.
In hindsight, having dissociative PTSD really affected the outcome. During the rape, when the pain increased, I shut my mind down completely. I was lost somewhere in a crack in the tile, and shut my mind off of the event that was happening.
Yes I was being raped by a monster, but at some point I just wasn’t there mentally. In body but not in soul. I shut down entirely.
This loss of memory continued for months after, it was always a blank period. I remember a lot from when I was 6 years old and up to the event, but nothing until 9 months later when we were leaving Europe for good.
The EMDR treatment was designed to trace memories, revisit. And rewrite them to minimize their trauma.
As each treatment started, I was to watch the lights as they moved in apparent random patterns…then stop. ”What do you see?” An answer. Lights. Stop. ”How do you feel?” An answer. Lights. Stop. ”Tell me what’s happening”.
For the first few sessions I could describe waking up in the night, another person, a man in a blue robe, walking me to the men’s bathroom, being lifted up, and the start of the unbelievable pain.
At that point everything stops, there are no more memories, no more pain…nothing
Nothing but the crack in the wall, the grout between the tiles.
I could describe the hallway, the sidelights casting a dim glow, the quietness of a hospital when no one is around or stirring at 2:00 am. The open doorway, with doors. The washroom’s colors and layout, designed to be occupied by many at once, stalls on one side, sinks on the other, with urinals around the corner in the back.
Tiled walls. The fittings on top of the urinal itself.
The pain. The crying.
Then nothing.
A brief haunt of memory the next morning after the rape, still in my hospital bed, when the first nurse came in. I had wet the bed.
No memories of my parents coming to get me, or returning home. Nothing of the next few months.
By the time I started EMDR I had lived with this nothingness for 30 some years. It actually haunted me, always wondering. It was like a piece of me was missing, and I had grown used to the fact it was my 7 year old self that was gone. Mentally trapped in the tile.
Did I need to remember? Did I need to walk through the trauma, the rape and the pain? Would it help in bringing me to the whole person once again? And these are the questions… so difficult.
Yes, because of my search for an answer as to my transexual orientation. My desire to live through the event and know and remember. It was the only way to fully heal, to move on.
With the power of talk therapy and the effect of the EMDR sessions I began remembering the event, the rape. Each session a little more of the memory, each session a little more painful. In 8 months I remembered every little detail.
Once these memories came clearer, Dr. G began re-framing the event, and the fact that my guilt and shame was misplaced.
Lights. Stop. “Tell me how you feel about that event now.” “What would you say to this man?” “What would you do?” “How do you feel about your parents?”
But with the benefit of remembering came the side effects that I went through. The memories had the opposite effect and put my mind on overload and the nightmares and flashbacks began in earnest. I started to have “The Nightmare” Blog Post 46 The NIghtmare more frequently. Instead of having the dreams about once a month before EMDR, it grew to several times a week.
The flashbacks during the day increased as well, and are usually the same. Being stopped dead in my tracks as I see the two hands under my arms lifting me up. The flashback could happen when least expected. Triggered by a wide arrange of day to day life. Trying to go into a men’s washroom could paralyze me. Being in a dark hallway. The arrangement of the overhead lights. A dentist chair, the hospital.
The increased nightmares and flashbacks nearly crippling, but I had the solution.
Alcohol.
Alcohol in large enough quantities so I passed out into such a deep drunk that The Nightmare wouldn’t come. If I wasn’t drunk I wouldn’t sleep, for fear it would occur with the same result.
I continued on with EMDR for nearly a year, but ended up being worse off than when I started. I simply had to quit in the hopes The Nightmare and flashbacks would fade.
I remembered though, remembered every single detail of the rape itself, the picture now complete. Maybe if I continued on with EMDR we would have begun the healing stage of the treatment, to re-write those memories, or lessen their crippling effect. But I couldn’t take it anymore. Re-living the trauma was killing me, and I was trying to do the same by alcohol overdose.
It was years later when finally the flashbacks slowed, then become a rarity. Still triggered standing in the shower, when my mind drifts looking at the tile. Or in a men’s restroom, when a stranger enters behind me.
The child was still lost, but I knew where he was now. But my adult self during the time I tried EMDR was too far lost with the alcohol and depression to have the strength to save him.
The drinking became worse, my outlook and confusion overwhelming for the next several years.
However, If I had the option of foregoing EMDR in the past, I would choose not to.
EMDR had one positive effect… I remember.