Cast Out Childhood Demons With EMDR For Complex Trauma
You were 10 years old seated at the kitchen table nervously holding your report card and waiting for your mom’s reaction (which was always unpredictable). Even though you had tried your best, math was not an easy subject for you but your grade wasn’t as bad as you thought it might be.
When your mom sat down and finally looked at your grade she exploded, calling you things that usually an enemy would only say about you. And then promptly afterwards, gave you the silent treatment. You wanted to explain that you did try your best, but as tears started to well up in your eyes and a lump formed in your throat, you couldn’t speak. This moment, like so many that came before and after it with your mom, made you feel helpless and ashamed of yourself for not pleasing her. Like nothing you ever did was good enough.
As you talk about this memory with your therapist she says, “I think EMDR therapy would be helpful for your experience. It would help you process those deep feelings of inadequacy you’ve been carrying around.”
“EMDR therapy? What’s that like?”
How Does EMDR Therapy for Complex Trauma Work?
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an evidence based approach used to treat trauma that can help you process distressing memories and reduce the symptoms caused by those memories, increasing your well-being. Here’s a possible example of what you could expect from an EMDR therapy session for complex trauma originating from an EIP.
Your therapist begins by having you focus on a distressing memory, like the experience of showing your report card to your mom and being told you’re just “not enough.” It seems all through life you’ve felt helpless and that you can’t do anything right.
“What’s the worst part of it?,” your therapist asks. “What body sensations do you feel?” You describe them to her, really tuning into what your body is telling you.
She then asks you how upsetting or stressful this memory is, from 0 to 10. You rate it a 6.
Other negative beliefs start to pop up as you continue to focus on this memory and feelings. “I’m not good enough. I’ll never be good enough. I should just stay out of everyone’s way.”
Your therapist starts performing sets of either side-to-side eye movements or tapping. These bilateral stimulations help your body remember the sensation, but still allows you to feel safe and process any new information about that memory.
As you take a deep breath she asks what you notice. “I notice how small I feel,” you say. Your heart is racing in your chest. “I feel like no matter what I say it’s not going to make things any better with my mom.”
Then your therapist says, “Ok, that makes sense.” She continues with the bilateral stimulation for another set until your distress level goes down between a level 0 and 2. Next, your therapist asks you to do a body scan. “Do you still notice any of that body discomfort?
If you still feel discomfort, your therapist will do shorter sets of bilateral simulations focused purely on your body sensations until you start to feel calm.
“Now when you think about that memory,” she says, “what feels more true than ‘I’m helpless’?”
You think for a minute. “I think it would have to be that I did the best I could,” you say. “I know I tried my best even if it wasn’t what she wanted or expected of me. And I am enough, even if she’s never been able to see that.”
“Hold that thought,” your therapist says, smiling. She then leads you in shorter sets of bilateral stimulation with that new belief until it feels as strong as it can.
After you reprocess, that memory should now be as neutralized as possible. You’ve reshaped how your brain has stored that memory and it should lose its power over you. Your brain stores this reprocessing as new information.
In future sessions, your therapist should go through and see if there’s any other current or future triggers to the belief “I'm helpless” to completely clear those out so they stop coming up for you during times of stress or uncertainty.
When you think about the memory at the kitchen table with your mom now, you feel more like an adult observing what happened to you, not like you’re still a little kid stuck trying to protect yourself. You see who you are now and what’s in your control. Your negative core beliefs start to change into positive ones that show more self compassion. You should feel more present, able to take in what your parent or others say without feeling like you’re reliving the bad experience again. Your body should also feel calmer after it.
Is EMDR Therapy Distressing?
One of the most commonly asked questions is about how upsetting EMDR for complex trauma is. Those who are considering the therapy want to know: Does it feel like you're re-living the memory?
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Some find accessing memories based on your past trauma challenging due to repression, avoidance, or disassociation. While the process can be uncomfortable, your therapist should work with you to help you develop coping skills to stay in your window of tolerance. They should also go at your pace if you feel it is too much.
During the process, the bilateral stimulations your therapist will use does not make you feel like you're re-living the memory. Instead, you will begin to see your memory from a different lens and establish new, more realistic and positive beliefs. Afterwards, the memory will not be distressing and your well-being should improve.
How Long Does EMDR Therapy Take for Complex Trauma?
So how long does EMDR therapy usually last? It depends on a number of factors and every person is different. First and foremost, we focus on healing and not speed. For those who have complex trauma, like those with the experience of having an emotionally immature parent, EMDR therapy is usually longer-term therapy of over a year. Instead of having one, clear root issue to deal with, there’s often many spread across the entire relationship with your EIP that needs deeper support.
The length of time in therapy also depends on your processing and your current environment. For those who have changed their environment, EMDR therapy can be shorter term versus if they’re still actively in a toxic or abusive environment. There is often more resistance to processing those memories because survival instincts kick in and it may feel more helpful to retain current behaviors.
To prepare for undergoing EMDR therapy, you should also consider that current people and situations in your life might no longer fit once your beliefs start to change. It’s possible that as you start seeing yourself in a healthier light, good enough as you are, you will attract those who are in a healthier space as well.
EMDR Therapy vs Traditional Talk Therapy
As an EMDR therapist, I’ve found that those who have experienced EMDR therapy are usually surprised by how well this process works. If you’re already familiar with a more traditional talk-style of therapy, you might not know what to expect when starting EMDR therapy.
In talk therapy, you share a story about your trauma and allow yourself to feel those feelings and validate them. However, for those who need more support, you may notice that all of the symptoms of your trauma are still there. You’re still having to put in a lot of work to cope with your symptoms.
EMDR therapy offers a deeper solution to deal with trauma. Those who have undergone this therapy share with me that they finally feel like they’re getting to the root of their issues and reshaping how their brain stores the traumatic memories. Though this type of therapy involves less talking, it is highly effective.
Having experienced EMDR therapy for myself as a patient, I totally agree. Therapy isn’t a one size fits all model. If you’ve tried traditional talk therapy and still felt like you need more support, then EMDR therapy might be right for you.
Benefits of EMDR for Complex Trauma
After your EMDR therapy session, expect to feel more emotionally raw. You’ve been diving back into your trauma to help heal yourself so it’s important to understand that this reprocessing can bring up new insights that start to heal how you respond to past triggers. Here are some benefits of EMDR therapy for complex trauma.
Reduced Nightmares and Intrusive Thoughts
A common occurrence is to have new dreams following your sessions about your past trauma. When you once may have re-lived your childhood trauma in your nightmares, your dreams will tend to change in general, mirroring the changes happening in your inner world so that the dream experience of your trauma becomes less distressing.
The same is true for your intrusive thoughts. As your beliefs about yourself change with EMDR sessions, you’ll be more able to replace your intrusive, unwanted thoughts with more positive ones.
Improved Social Relationships
You’ll likely notice that old triggers just don’t impact you as much as they used to, which can have a big impact on your relationship with others.
For example, if you were a chronic people-pleaser who used to feel triggered when receiving critical feedback from a loved one so that you felt the need to shift your actions to meet others’ needs, you should now feel more secure in your decisions. These moments don’t affect you like they did before. You now recognize that others are allowed to have their feelings and you don’t have to be the one to try and fix how others feel.
As a result, your relationships will begin to shift as you gain more confidence in yourself. You’ll become less concerned about how others perceive you and find that you’re able to be more present in conversations. You start to find it easier to connect with others and to also stand up for yourself when needed.
An Overall Positive Sense of Self
After what has likely been a long period of dealing with feelings of insecurity in your environment with your EIP, reshaping your trauma will feel like a new lease on life. Where you once struggled with low self-worth because you were always trying to minimize your own needs, you’ll feel empowered to take care of yourself. You’ll develop a better sense of who you are and what your needs are.
EMDR for complex trauma will help you face and challenge negative core beliefs about yourself. These beliefs formed in childhood helped protect you when you were young and most vulnerable. As you walk through these memories as an adult, EMDR will allow you to show self-compassion for that version of you and help you understand why you felt that way but don’t have to any longer. A positive sense of self will begin to emerge as the negative beliefs fall away.
5 Signs that You’re Ready for EMDR Therapy
Since EMDR therapy for complex trauma developed in childhood as a result of your EIP requires a longer time commitment to fully heal, it’s helpful to know when you’re in a good place to begin getting help. Some signs that you are ready for EMDR therapy include:
1. You have consistency in your daily life.
EMDR for complex trauma takes multiple sessions. If you don’t have enough consistency in your daily life to commit to attending sessions and working routinely on the exercises recommended by your therapist, you will not see the full benefits of this therapy.
2. You have some social coping and regulation skills already.
EMDR can bring intense emotions and reactions to the surface when you begin processing your trauma. You’ll need to have coping and regulation skills in place to manage these feelings and experience a safer healing journey. If you are working with a trauma therapist, the initial goals of therapy will likely be learning, practicing and integrating these tools into your daily life in order to prepare for EMDR.
3. You have some understanding of your past trauma and how it’s impacting your life currently.
Something I often say in session to determine whether you have trauma is that you logically understand it’s not your fault, but emotionally it doesn’t feel that way. You might know what triggers you, but you cannot get past how it feels in your body, how it affects you emotionally, and how it impacts your relationship with yourself and others. You’re ready to let that shit go and do some deeper nervous system work.
4. The trauma you want to process feels calm enough to think or talk about.
You could talk about your past in great detail, but you realize you need more than just talking it out. You might have already done the work to think differently, but you want to also feel safer and more relaxed in your body as well.
5. You have some form of social support or secure attachment in your life.
As mentioned previously, EMDR can be an emotionally challenging experience often over a long period of time. This might consist of just your therapist, but the more support you have in your corner to lean on, motivate you, and cheer you on the more likely you’ll continue even when the road to recovery becomes difficult.
The Goal of EMDR Therapy
The entire goal of EMDR therapy is to rewire yourself and your relationships with other people. When you grow up in a chaotic environment such as living with an emotionally immature parent, you develop a survival mechanism to protect yourself by becoming distrustful of those around you. This unsafe environment causes you to not share much about yourself, to always be hyper vigilant, and to anticipate that you will always be blamed. As you grow out of that environment when you get older, it’s detrimental to yourself to stay stuck in your childhood trauma.
EMDR Therapy allows your brain to develop past those traumas instead of constantly perceiving you’re still in a bad situation. It does wonders for you becoming a whole person again and I want that for you!
If you’re interested in learning more about EMDR therapy and how it can help you, check out the info on my services page. If you’re looking for EMDR therapy in Las Vegas, I offer EMDR intensives and would be happy to chat more with you to see if it’s a good fit. Book a free intro call with me here.
