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Key points
- Traumatic events can flash back on us again and again.
- Our brains sometimes struggle to process traumatic memories.
- EMDR may help us stop mentally reliving distressing events.
Dinnertime.
Where was Tom?
Two unanswered texts and an unanswered phone call.
Something was not right.
I turned the fire off under the pan—I don’t remember what I was cooking except that it was a new recipe—and grabbed my car keys, heart pounding. Fueled by foreboding, I drove the familiar streets as fast as I could, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. And when I saw Tom’s truck still parked outside his shop, I knew.
What happened from that point on, the very worst moment of my life, is what I recounted over and over and over, through racking sobs, during EMDR.
EMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and it’s a form of psychotherapy that, through some sort of neurological hocus-pocus that science doesn’t yet fully understand but research confirms again and again, helps our brains process events we have found traumatic and that haunt us. It doesn’t cause us to forget them, it just allows us to remember them without reliving them in all their horrific glory.
When Painful Memories Haunt Us
Many bereaved people have such terrible moments seared into their memories. Yours might be of watching your loved one’s long decline from disease. Or a frantic scene in a hospital ER. Maybe the terrible thing happened at home so that you live with reminders every day. Whatever the specific memory, it causes flashbacks, accompanied by emotions that feel like they could rip your chest open: disbelief, horror, despair, guilt. (We all find something to feel guilty about, believe me.)
In the weeks after Tom died, I was tormented by the flashback of finding him. I could not think of him without being swamped by the image and its attendant awful emotions. The flashback was a wall of shock and horror, blocking access to my pure grief, which itself became ever more terrifying the longer it lurked behind the terrible image. Fearful as I was of the grief—once I start crying will I ever be able to stop?—I knew experiencing it was necessary in order to move forward. But I couldn’t seem to get past that wall.
So when I heard about EMDR, I figured it was worth a shot. I was grasping at anything and everything that might help me cope with the pain.
Reliving vs. Historical Memory
I recently discussed EMDR with psychologist Howard Lipke, author of Don’t I Have the Right to Be Angry?, who primarily works with vets. Lipke trained with Dr. Francine Shapiro, who developed EMDR, and then helped her train others.
To understand EMDR, he suggests thinking in terms of two memory systems. “There’s the reliving memory, where you remember something, and it feels like it’s happening again,” he says. “Some stuff belongs there, like riding a bicycle.” When you’re learning to ride a bicycle, you think every movement through, but, eventually, reliving the experience means just getting on the bicycle and riding.
We also have “the intellectual or historical memory.” That’s the memory we tap into when we look back on the past. These memories might come with emotions—maybe they’re sad or scary—but we can recall them without feeling like we’re reliving them. They don’t make our hearts pound with panic; they don’t swamp our brains with fear or shock.
Usually, with time, the brain manages to process terrible events and tuck them safely into historical memory. But sometimes a trauma gets stuck in the reliving memory. “When some event happens to wake that up, you feel like it’s happening again,” Lipke says. “It wakes up the fear and the emotions. The memory is not integrated, not digested.”
Often, he says, an event gets stuck in the reliving memory because we have not been able to process it in sleep for some reason—perhaps we are not sleeping soundly enough or are waking when a dream about it frightens us, whether or not we remember the morning after. (Perhaps leaving the light on and streaming "Gilmore Girls" all night in bed for the first couple of months didn’t help me.)
“But if that memory is processed,” Lipke continues, “much of it moves to that intellectual, historical place; you know it happened, but you don’t feel like it’s happening again.” And for reasons science has yet to fully understand, “EMDR allows for the more rapid processing of the memory, so you know it’s in the past.”
The treatment entails recounting your traumatic memory over and over while either moving your eyes rapidly side to side, which is how the procedure was developed, or by other similar methods that have also proven effective.
Because we were in the darkest hours of the pandemic, my EMDR was conducted online. My therapist had me cross my arms over my chest and tap my shoulders rapidly—alternating right hand tapping my left shoulder and left hand tapping my right—while I told my story again and again.
Unpleasant but Effective
Lipke emphasizes that EMDR is far more than the actual eye movement or tapping—it is also the discussion before and after; it is the information you share with your therapist and the reframing they do with you. (Which is why do-it-yourself EMDR is not wise.)
When I started EMDR, I already seeing my longtime therapist. She was not comfortable doing EMDR online, so, for a while, I saw two therapists weekly. (Fortunately, I was able to manage the expense at the time.) With my permission, these therapists checked in with each other about me. Along with doing the tapping procedure, I talked with my EMDR therapist about releasing my burden of unwarranted guilt, and we ended each session with a calming guided meditation.
I won’t lie: EMDR was a truly unpleasant experience. I did it once a week for about 10 weeks, and I have never cried as violently or uncontrollably as I did during those sessions. It felt like—please excuse the image—vomiting emotions from the deepest part of my soul. It was likely, my therapists agreed, I was also churning up old traumas from my complicated past. Therapists must be cautious that the treatment itself doesn’t become traumatizing by bringing up things a patient is not strong enough to handle.
I ended each session exhausted—I quickly learned not to plan anything else on EMDR days—and surrounded by drifts of used Kleenex. But the treatment worked. I have not forgotten that terrible day and try to avoid thinking about it, but at least I can think about it without feeling like it’s happening again. More importantly, I can think about Tom without going straight to that image. I can remember him as I want to.
EMDR helped crumble the wall of shock and guilt to let the pure grief in—which, when you think of it, is not much of a reward. But for me, it was the next, necessary step on the long road.
