EMDR Is Not for Everyone
I’m a huge proponent of EMDR. As I mentioned in a previous post, ever since I saw EMDR in action as graduate student, I wanted to know more about EMDR and how I could use it to help others. And I can confidently say that most of the people I’ve used EMDR with in counseling have reported they no longer feel any emotional distress related to the experiences we’ve worked on in therapy. While that is great news, I have also learned that EMDR is not always the best intervention for everyone. In fact, I’ve observed at least 3 specific barriers that could interfere with achieving the full benefit from EMDR.
Barrier 1: You’ve buried your emotions deep. A little too deep.
We are really good at compartmentalizing our emotions. I could probably dedicate an entire blog post to just this topic alone, but for now I’ll just say that most people don’t like to feel bad. We don’t like crying, we don’t like feeling fear, vulnerability, or helplessness – just to name a few. So, we do our best to wrap these emotions up, and put them somewhere inside of ourselves where we don’t have to think about them - or feel them. It is important to note that I’m not referring to dissociation here, I’m talking about a learned (intentional) behavior or skill. While compartmentalizing isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, if we do it too often then we can start to have problems. Some people do such a good job of burying their feelings, that they don’t even know where those feelings are buried anymore. I don’t come across this issue very often, but sometimes I will have a client tell me that they realize they “should talk to someone” about a past traumatic event, but they have pushed their feelings so deep that they don’t know how to access and connect to those feelings. Now this alone doesn’t mean EMDR can’t help, but it leads me to the second barrier, which is –
Barrier 2: You don’t want to feel the feelings.
More often, I will meet a client who knows where they’ve kept their hurt feelings buried, but they are so afraid of letting them out that they spend all their energy keeping those feelings covered up. See, when you start working on a memory, EMDR has a way of locating the feeling associated with that memory and bringing it right up to the surface. Sometimes, that can happen really quickly. Remember the splinter analogy? Well removing splinters can be painful, and that is also true for emotional splinters. Unfortunately, the only way to reprocess emotions is to feel them; but once you reprocess them successfully, you don’t have to go through it again! What I mean is, you only have to dig to remove a splinter until the splinter is gone, right? So you need to be prepared to feel the feelings. But if you trust the process, you won’t have to keep feeling them over and over again.
Barrier 3: You have an internal conflict.
EMDR is not going to change your value system. It won’t change who you are as a person, including what you feel is right and wrong. So if you are working on an issue that creates an internal conflict, EMDR will get you to that point. It is somewhat difficult to illustrate what this looks like (because it can look different in an infinite number of ways), but for the sake of simplicity let’s talk about forgiveness. If you are working on an issue that requires forgiveness in order to completely heal from your emotional pain but you are not ready to forgive, then you have an internal conflict. This goes for situations where you either need to forgive someone else, or forgive yourself. You can still benefit from EMDR, but only as much as your inner conflict will allow.
An additional note: There is not a lot of talking with EMDR.
While this isn’t a specific barrier, I feel it important to note that EMDR is not like traditional therapy in that there isn’t a lot of talking. In fact, you don’t even need to disclose what memory you are working on to your therapist, which many clients find relieving! Some trauma is too hurtful to talk about out loud, and that is totally ok with EMDR. Because your mind works so quickly to make connections during the EMDR process, translating those mental connections into verbal language would slow the process down, which we don’t want to do. During Phase 3 your therapist will check in about every 30 seconds or so, to make sure you are still making meaningful connections, and then resume the bi-lateral stimulation. During these check ins, you will give very brief feedback on what you are experiencing – no more than a sentence or two. It can be really hard for some people to refrain from talking about their feelings, and if you are a person who likes to process things through verbal communication then you may not like EMDR as a therapeutic intervention.
There is still hope.
Even if one (or more) of these barriers apply to you, that doesn’t mean EMDR can’t be helpful. You will need to have a thorough discussion with your EMDR Certified Therapist in order to determine what the best course of action will be for you and your specific situation, which may be a different course of counseling. Most often, when working with clients I spend a little more time preparing for EMDR in order to make sure that we eliminate as many barriers as we can before we get started with reprocessing memories. That is why it is important to find a Certified EMDR Therapist who has the training and experience to help you work through the process. If you are ready to start your journey toward healing, or would like to talk more about whether EMDR may be helpful for you, please contact me to schedule an appointment. You can also locate an EMDR Certified Therapist in your area by visiting the EMDRIA website.
