Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of therapy that helps people heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences. It has been extensively researched and proven effective for the treatment of trauma. After the therapist and the client agree that EMDR therapy is a good fit, and begin to work together, the client will be asked to focus on a specific event. Attention will be given to a negative image, belief, and body feeling related to this event, and then to a positive belief that would indicate the issues was resolved. While the client focuses on the upsetting event, the therapist will begin sets of side-to-side eye movements, sounds, or taps (called processing, around 30 second increments). The client will be guided to notice what comes to mind after each set. They may experience shifts in insight or changes in images, feelings, or beliefs regarding the event. The client has full control to stop the therapist at any point, if needed. The sets of eye movements, sounds, or taps are repeated until the event becomes less disturbing. (Click here for source.)
What is my experience, during this process? I close my eyes while the tappers are going (I have also done this eyes open and following my therapists fingers rapidly back and forth, which is the standard process for EMDR) and just let my thoughts wander. During the processing period, a memory forms and rises into my consciousness. Even when I am anxious that nothing will happen, something always does. I try to not direct my thoughts, even if I think I am on the correct path for where this session is going. Now that I am experienced with the process, I know sometimes the memories and associations go a completely different way than expected. All of them, together, form a big picture that can give offer new insights or resolution into a current emotional issue.
Very recently I experienced a major panic attack at the Ft. Myers airport (home.) My husband and I were traveling to Savannah to celebrate our anniversary. As soon as I cleared security, I began having difficulty breathing, I felt dizzy, I felt a great sense of fear, I had to force myself to walk down to the gate. I was unable to sit at the gate, I walked back and forth through the terminal to burn off some anxiety. I travel with both Xanax and Imitrex (for migraines) just in case. After taking a Xanax and walking, I was able to calm down enough to talk some reason into myself. I had an overwhelming fear, though, that the plane was going to crash if we boarded. (Conversely that if we did not board, it would not crash.)
EMDR sessions begin with me describing a current issue/memory in as much detail as I am able to. My therapist then asks me to describe the physical distress I am feeling, thinking about this, and to rate my distress on a scale from 1-10. After that I am asked to make a summary statement about the memory (in this case, I will cause this plane to crash if I get on it.) I then rate how true I find that statement on a scale from 1-7. (Obviously this belief was untrue, as I got on the plane and it did not crash. However, we are discussing the incident specifically and, at that time, I would have rated the belief as a 6.)
In the following transcript, REM/Bi-lateral brain simulation ( called processing) is noted as >>>>>
>>>>> I remember flying in September. I was going to Atlanta for my underwater photo shoot. I was very, very depressed. I was going ahead with the photo shoot, for my 50th birthday, which I had planned several months before. When I had planned that shoot, I was in a very different place than I found myself that day. I had imagined myself in some sort of 50-year-old glory, at peace under the water. It was the complete opposite. I was so sad that it had become such a different experience than I had originally planned. I was arriving there in such a bad state, I wasn’t even sure I would be able to do the shoot. This was the darkest period of my depressive episode this summer. I should have been hospitalized instead of traveling. I know that now. I was so not-myself that I was unable to see that. I was lock-stepping through my plans. It took a great deal of courage for me to continue on, be there alone that night with my feelings, do this thing in which all attention would be on me and I needed to perform, almost. In a completely different state than I anticipated. Afterwards, I arrived back at the airport in a much better state, having done this physically and emotionally difficult thing for 4 hours. I was proud of myself. Pruney, chlorine halos around everything. Braids and glasses. It ended well, but that was a small portion of the trip, the larger portion had come the previous day with the emotions and the doubts I could even do this.
>>>>>I remember being in the Salt Lake City airport. This was a really long time ago. I was saying goodbye to my boyfriend, he was leaving the country for an extended period of time. We had already said goodbye several times, but this was the final time. I felt overwhelmed with the amount of time in front of me till I saw him again. My sadness and grief were overwhelming to me. I went home and felt the weight of that time, I didn’t know how I was going to be able to do it. I remember it being several days before I was even sure time wasn’t going to stop entirely.
>>>>>I went a few more years back. I am in the Kansas City airport. I am saying goodbye to my mother. I am leaving for college for the first time. I had been excited to go. I hadn’t really considered the goodbye until that moment and we both broke down. I was her oldest, the first to go. I knew I wouldn’t see her again until December. Again, with the courage, having to make myself walk onto the plane, crying so hard I couldn’t see. Having just remembered this, I see a strong similarity to a few years ago when I said goodbye to MY oldest at college, knowing I would not see them till December. There was no plane involved but the breakdown between us was the same as it had been between my mother and I. I couldn’t calm down after that, I returned to my hotel room and threw up because I was crying so hard. It was more than leaving my oldest, we had just left our home in Alton, it was my last goodbye after months of goodbyes. My future was very uncertain at that point. It felt like everything was going to end because everything WAS ending. I only slept a few hours, got up before sunrise and started my 3-day drive to Florida.
>>>>>I’m in the Salt Lake City airport again. This is last year. I am returning home from celebrating my parents 50th anniversary. I am waiting for my plane and there are missionaries all around me. I start to wonder if I’m at the gate where I said goodbye to my boyfriend many years before. I’m emotionally worn out and short on sleep. I get triggered by the sadness of this memory and also with the complicated religious issues I faced in the time afterwards. The missionaries are a symbol of both and they are all around me. I start to cry. Of course, I wind up seated next to two missionaries on the plane. I’m unable to sleep through the night, I get more and more upset, I listen to my sad music and stare out the window. We land in the Atlanta airport. I’m so tired I fall asleep at the gate and, when I wake up, the plane has left, everyone is gone,. I am absolutely the only person there. It was a terrible, terrible feeling. I had been left, I had been forgotten. I feel ashamed I fell asleep and missed my flight home. I am embarrassed. I feel humiliated thinking of everyone in line to board the plane and me so obviously asleep. The gate agents didn’t think to check on me, no kind person shook me awake to ask. This makes me feel very sorry for myself, that I was so insignificant. I feel confused as well, I feel fear, as I try to straighten this out my mind. I think back on the trip out to Utah where I had used the restroom then went and sat at the wrong gate in Atlanta when I realized what I had done, I panicked. I fear I’m becoming mentally unbalanced to have two airport mishaps on the same trip. I fear that I am going crazy. This disturbs me. I wait for a later flight thinking about all of this. I feel sick, from everything. The feeling sticks with me after I get home.
>>>>>This does not fit the airplane or airport theme but I see myself in the back of an ambulance a few years ago. One more thing has gone wrong for me. I can’t make it to Florida, I am stopped by a GI bleed that will put me in ICU for 4 days. I’m in Atlanta when this happens.
Oh, FFS. We were connecting through Atlanta on that trip to Savannah. It’s all Atlanta, almost everything.
Having reached a new insight/conclusion, my therapist ask would me for a positive statement about my memories. I shouldn’t go to Atlanta, haha? “I don’t have the power to cause a plane to crash.” It never was about the plane crashing anyway. It was only the most simple cause my mind could associate with my feeling.” On a scale of 1-7 how true would you rate that statement? A 5, I don’t feel completely convinced of it, but logically I know I don’t have this power and can see now that in my panic I was focusing on the wrong thing.
I’ve been through the Atlanta airport 25 times, at least. Airplanes and airports are both fairly common to me. My sudden fear of flying had nothing to do with the safety of the plane and everything to do with our connection in Atlanta and the scale suddenly tipping too heavily to emotional goodbyes and a collection of painful memories in that area. Recovering from my depressive episode, I would not have been able to deal with any strong grief or emotion like this. High emotion was a danger to me when this happened. My mind had sent a strong warning to me. Do not chance it.
(As an end note, my oldest and I have planned a trip to Atlanta this fall for a music festival and we are both determined (he also has some collateral damage from the Atlanta Airport) to make some happy memories that are stronger than the others that wait for me there.)
