My First Session With EMDR
I’m writing this a week after my first EMDR session experience. Things have started to piece apart, come to fruition, show up in dreams, and land with sharp realization.
I’ve spent most of my life trying to understand myself and the world better. I think that’s why I became an avid reader; it made me drop into other people’s experiences immediately. But this became especially true after going through challenging times. I’ve often felt a communion with my intuition; listening to it was a different story.
So there has always been this conflict between living and feeling for me. Practically, I didn’t grow up with awareness of the universe or spirituality in that sense, so for a long time I tried to blend in, become part of the cog in the machine, and find my place in it. Which became one conflict after another because it clashed with the way I naturally was.
I remember being given an “assertiveness” handbook early on because I was labeled too passive, nice, kind — whatever you want to call it — and I had to “toughen up” to be a human in this world.
As I’ve discovered my own spirituality, had my own mystical experiences, and dove deep into hypnosis and meditation that excavated my inner child, shadow, and higher self, I’ve also discovered that there is something wrong with a society that discards the feminine archetypes.
There was never a need to change. It was always a need to be understood.
Anyway, after ten years of dabbling with hypnosis, flower remedies, herbal remedies, meditation, journaling, and examining my shadow and inner child self, I felt it was time to try EMDR.
Now, why now?
I think postpartum is really hard. I think if you don’t have a village around you and are instead given negative experiences, your postpartum experience — even if it started off great — will turn sour pretty quickly. It’s just the nature of the physical and emotional coming online.
I often wonder if I had given birth near my family whether I may not have needed it. But after months of trying to get back to baseline — which, looking back, was me forcing something that wasn’t hormonally possible — I finally listened to my voice and sought an EMDR therapist.
What is EMDR? It’s Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s pertinent for exploring trauma and any feelings that seem to be molded in our subconscious. It’s a modality to be free from stuckness.
If you look at the way I grew up, I had a pretty good childhood. I didn’t go through major trauma or anything. But I do think that after a while — if you’re like me, someone who is more quiet and observably feminine and emotional in a patriarchal society — being pushed to be someone you’re not to survive sits in those weird expectations, and somehow you end up wondering who you are at the age of 34.
I had heard of EMDR from a meditation practice I do. I thought it was only for big “T” trauma. However, I’ve learned that our nervous system doesn’t necessarily discriminate between what was experienced and how bad or mild it was.
So, the labels I had crowded around myself to define who I am became a part of that stuckness. Experiences with people who intend to hurt rather than love can create dissonance in what was once a drawn-out value system.
When I met with my therapist that day, she asked what I wanted to work through.
I immediately told her: the feelings of guilt.
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From an etymological standpoint, she told me that guilt’s roots are from the 17th century, in which the word began to acquire a moral weight: to be blameworthy was not just to be liable to criticism, but to be morally culpable, often implying intentional wrongdoing.
This made me wonder how guilt existed in the body if I felt it. What did it mean to feel blame and responsibility for an accusation that isn’t ours?
I chose guilt because I feel like it’s something that’s kept me stuck, stopped me from moving forward, kept me frozen and made it difficult to feel alive.
I couldn’t understand why it took me so long to release it, but my therapist told me it can come from being unaligned, allowing others to dictate your opinions, your happiness, your life.
So, alas, we went into it.
She directed me to tap on my collarbone, an area in the body where a lot of energy moves through. EMDR is characteristically known for talking through experiences and allowing whatever comes up to move through the body.
She told me to bring guilt online and imagine whatever came up. After a few minutes, she had me describe what I was seeing and feeling.
The energy moved to my throat, and it felt stuck.
I saw a lily flower curled around me, almost like I was protecting myself with a wall of fire. That image turned into me as a black wolf, still protecting the flower from fire with the energy moving to my chest.
Throughout my visions, my therapist told me to explain what I saw and what I was feeling. She asked to name it and underneath my guilt was anger.
She then asked me to become curious about anger, have tea with it, listen to what it has to say.
Anger turned from a wall of fire to the Balrog demon from Lord of the Rings. I understood that despite my wolf archetype, I wasn’t trying to attack anyone, even when they threatened my safety.
I was trying to protect something.
After much discussion, and understanding the roots to the word guilt, the realizations came as borrowed anger. I was carrying anger from others, I was allowing it to be my own. I also felt like I wasn’t allowed to express it.
The end of my session left me with my wolf archetype coming out of the ocean and rolling on the beach in the sand. Physically the energy travelled down to my feet.
This was just the first session, but I truly felt a release I had never felt in other parts of my healing journey. I finally felt a release of responsibility and permission to feel from things I’d been hurt by. The places I felt guilt dissipated, and became hot air — full of anger but devoid of attachment and truth.
I’m sharing this because I think we hear a lot about the end of healing journeys and not so much about the beginnings or the in betweens. I felt all these things I had held onto for years evaporate and reclaim my intention within myself. I’m sure with more attention and space for future sessions, more clarity will come. For now, I’m observing an identity I no longer identify with.
