downWORD 2.0

This past Thursday I went to see my therapist but instead of doing art therapy as we have done in the past, she used a technique with me known as EMDR.  The mechanics of the technique, at least the way I experienced it, are listening to alternating “beep” sounds, using stereo headphones, in the left ear then the right ear, and so on.  There are also small vibrating disks that are placed in both hands, which pulsate to the same rhythm as the beeps. 

The therapist turned on the pulsing and the beeping mechanisms for 15-30 seconds at a time and asked me to go back to a traumatic event I had as a child (we had already selected such an event–one I felt was still haunting me).  After the 15-30 seconds of alternating beeps and pulses was up she asked me to describe what I was feeling, seeing, hearing, sensing, smelling, etc.

The link above kind of explains the theory behing EMDR.  According to Shapiro’s (the guy who came up with this) theory:

when a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm usual ways of coping and be inadequately processed; it is then dysfunctionally stored in an isolated memory network. When this memory network is activated, the individual may re-experience aspects of the original event, often resulting in inappropriate overreactions. This explains why people who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic incident may have recurring sensory flashbacks, thoughts, beliefs, or dreams. An unprocessed incident can retain high levels of intensity, even though many years may have passed.

My therapist explained our desired outcome like this:  “We want to take ‘the charge’ out of that particular memory so that you can process the event and move on.” (paraphrase)

The EMDR on Thursday went on for about half an hour and I recalled many sensations, smells, feelings and thoughts that I would have previously told you I had forgotten long ago about. 

But the most thought-provoking results of my EMDR have happened in the last 48 hours.  For the past 2 nights I have awoken partially to myself whimpering and crying.  I do not remember very much from the dreams except that I remember walking down (or perhaps up) the stairs of a house that had just been burned down.  I had the sense that many people had suffered in the burning and there was great sorrow.  It was, as if, I had dreamed of hell but had not touched the flame or perhaps that I was leaving hell, having been there and saying goodbye to those still suffering.  I don’t know but I have the sense that this dream is very profound to me.  I would even say that this dream leaves me with a feeling of real change–like I will never be the same after having this “underworld experience.”

The combination of these dreams, therapy, movement in my own personal life and transition out of Progress Valley Halfway House and into Progress Valley Sober House leaves me with a real sense of “the next stage” or passing from one period to another.  Today I have a fundamentally different sense or “knowing” that my Higher Power is gently yet firmly moving me out of the past and into the present and future.  I cannot even explain this sensation nor do I see the world with rose-colored glasses but rather, that as the seasons here change from winter to spring, I am also changing fundamentally at my core.  This shift feels very strange to me but I know that it is good—-very good.

(for more on Progress Valley (PV), check out a poem I just wrote this week for the house.  To PV, I am forever grateful.