• Anger
in relation to what happened to you and with the person who was responsible
TRAUMA
A trauma is a distressing or disturbing event that can be either physical or emotional and result in significant damage to psychological development. It can occur as a result of either a single event, or long lasting or repeated events that are overwhelming, affecting the ability to cope or make sense of what happened. Often “smaller” traumatic events over a longer period of time can be more destabilising to the nervous system than one later on in life what we call “Big T” trauma.
Examples include:
• Serious accidents e.g. RTA (road traffic accident)
• Bereavement
• Being told you have a life threatening illness
• Physical, emotional or sexual abuse
• Neglect
• Natural or man-made disasters
• Being taken hostage
• Bullying
Everyone has different ways of responding to events so what one individual finds traumatic, another may not find as distressing. Some individuals may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or a severe anxiety disorder.
Symptoms include:
• Constantly thinking about the event
• Images of the event coming into your mind (known as flashbacks)
• Difficulty sleeping and/or nightmares
• Changes in how you feel emotionally, for example feeling very frightened, anxious, angry, low in mood
• Avoiding certain situations that remind you of the event
• Feeling numb, stunned, shocked or dazed and having difficulties connecting with life around you
• Denying that the event actually happened
• Concentration and memory problems.
In addition, a wide range of emotions may be experienced including:
EMDR
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) is a form of psychological intervention developed by Dr Francine Shapiro in 1987 in the United States of America. It is now accepted as one of the treatments of choices for PTSD in adults (NICE guidelines) and scientific research for EMDR with children and adolescents is constantly increasing as well.
It works on the basis that when an individual experiences a distressing event, the memory of that trauma can become frozen on a neurological level and the brain is unable to process the memory. If the memory remains frozen and unprocessed it can be easily accessed by triggers (smells, sounds, images, feelings, etc) that remind the individual of the trauma and can make them feel as though they are re-experiencing it. Nightmares and flashbacks also very common and work at ‘keeping the memory alive’.
EMDR works by stimulating the brain from left to right using either eye movements, tapping or sounds to help the brain to unblock the frozen disturbing memory so that it is processed and no longer causes any distress. EMDR is thought to be working in a similar way to what happens during certain states of sleep (rapid eye movement or REM) when we mostly experience dreams.
What happens when you are traumatised?
Most of the time your body routinely manages new information and experiences without you being aware of it. However, when something out of the ordinary occurs and you are traumatised by an overwhelming event (e.g. a car accident) or by being repeatedly subjected to distress (e.g. childhood neglect), your natural coping mechanism can become overloaded.
This overloading can result in disturbing experiences remaining frozen in your brain or being “unprocessed”. Such unprocessed memories and feelings are stored in the limbic system of your brain in a “raw” and emotional form, rather than in a verbal “story” mode.
This limbic system maintains traumatic memories in an isolated memory network that is associated with emotions and physical sensations, and which are disconnected from the brain’s cortex where we use language to store memories.
The limbic system’s traumatic memories can be continually triggered when you experience events similar to the difficult experiences you have been through. Often the memory itself is long forgotten, but the painful feelings such as anxiety, panic, anger or despair are continually triggered in the present.
Your ability to live in the present and learn from new experiences can therefore become inhibited. EMDR helps create the connections between your brain’s memory networks, enabling your brain to process the traumatic memory in a very natural way.
What is an EMDR session like?
EMDR utilises the natural healing ability of your body. After a thorough assessment, you will be asked specific questions about a particular disturbing memory. Eye movements, similar to those during REM sleep, will be recreated simply by asking you to watch the therapist’s finger moving backwards and forwards across your visual field.
Sometimes, a bar of moving lights or headphones is used instead. The eye movements will last for a short while and then stop. You will then be asked to report back on the experiences you have had during each of these sets of eye movements. Experiences during a session may include changes in thoughts, images and feelings.
With repeated sets of eye movements, the memory tends to change in such a way that it loses its painful intensity and simply becomes a neutral memory of an event in the past.
Other associated memories may also heal at the same time. This linking of related memories can lead to a dramatic and rapid improvement in many aspects of your life.
What can EMDR be used for?
In addition to its use for the treatment of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, EMDR has been successfully used to treat:
- anxiety and panic attacks
- depression
- stress
- phobias
- sleep problems
- complicated grief
- addictions
- pain relief, phantom limb pain
- self-esteem and performance anxiety
- intergenerational trauma
- abuse, neglect, and all forms of Complex PTSD
How long does treatment take?
EMDR can be brief focused treatment or part of a longer psychotherapy programme. EMDR sessions can be for 60 to 90 minutes. Or research is now showing that EMDR intensive work can be useful for many. Which can take place over a day, a couple of days or a week’s worth of processing.
Will I will remain in control and empowered?
During EMDR treatment, you will remain in control, fully alert and wide-awake. This is not a form of hypnosis and you can stop the process at any time. Throughout the session, the therapist will support and facilitate your own self-healing and intervene as little as possible. Reprocessing is usually experienced as something that happens spontaneously, and new connections and insights are felt to arise quite naturally from within. As a result, most people experience EMDR as being a natural and very empowering therapy.
Can anyone benefit from EMDR?
EMDR can accelerate therapy by resolving the impact of your past traumas and allowing you to live more fully in the present. It is not, however, appropriate for everyone. The process is rapid, and any disturbing experiences, if they occur at all, last for a comparatively short period of time. Nevertheless, you need to be aware of, and willing to experience, the strong feelings and disturbing thoughts, which sometimes occur during sessions.
Adapted from www.thetraumacentre.com with thanks.
What evidence is there that EMDR is a successful treatment?
EMDR is an innovative clinical treatment which has successfully helped many individuals. The validity and reliability of EMDR has been established by rigorous research. There are now nineteen controlled studies into EMDR making it the most thoroughly researched method used in the treatment of trauma. (Details on www.emdr-europe.org and www.emdr.org) and is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) as an effective treatment for PTSD.
For more information on EMDR, please go to www.emdrassociation.org.uk