Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to the Safe Place Therapy podcast channel. My name is Stuart Shevorden, and I am one of the owners and directors of Safe Place Therapy, and I'm a mental health social worker. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet today. I would also like to pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We record this episode on. In all our episodes in the Kulin Nation, but also on other beautiful lands across Victoria.
Welcome, everyone. We're doing a podcast video related to EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing counseling or model. And here today we have Adam and PR who are counselors with Safe Place Therapy. PR Is a director and owner of the business, and Adam is one of our lead clinicians. My name's Stuart, and we'll be talking, as I said, about EMDR and what it's all about and what to kind of expect from an EMDR kind of process.
So how about one of you just explain for. For us, what is emdr and how would you kind of explain it to a. A client coming to see you?
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Nice one.
[00:01:26] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Hi, Stu. I normally start by saying it's a particular counseling approach that was developed some 30 or so years ago, but that's really kind of become more popular in the last few years. And it's designed as a real power move when it comes to helping people to take the distress and the residue out of terrible or difficult or traumatic experiences that they've had in their past.
Lots more I can say about it, but that's a good starting point.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So can you. Is there, like, a visual that you use normally with a client or like an analogy that kind of best describes it and kind of fleshes it out for them?
[00:02:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the way that it was described to us and the way that we were trained in it was that that traumatic or difficult material gets stuck in the brain. It kind of gets siloed off from the rest of the memories. And that's why you can experience sometimes intrusive thoughts and intrusive experiences about these traumatic experiences. And what EMDR therapy aims to do is by desensitizing that material, it then allows it to be integrated into the rest of the brain so that it's then not siloed off anymore. It's then LinkedIn with more helpful information in the brain. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of how I would explain it.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Isn't it funny how the brain reacts and we kind of got no real knowledge as to why it does what it does. So, you know, when. When a person. When two people have a car accident, the same accident, one might walk away with you know, significant distress or significant kind of issues for them, and the other might walk away with kind of mild anxiety. So isn't it interesting that. Yeah, it's sometimes hard to understand the why, but when that distress is really there, EMDR seems like it's a. It's a really great tool to. To turn that intensity down.
[00:03:35] Speaker C: And it can work for what I call, like, big T trauma, which is like, you know, say something like a, you know, a car accident or a robbery, as well as little T trauma, which, you know, might be something like, you know, a death of an animal or things like that. So it works on multiple levels at very kind of intense, traumatic, big T trauma things and little T trauma things. So it's useful, kind of across the board to help, you know, lower that really difficult emotion that can sometimes get stuck.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you have any exciting results that you feel comfortable sharing? Like maybe a particular client presentation where you go, wow, this has had a great impact for them?
[00:04:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I've got one I can share.
I had a client who I've been seeing for quite some time. We had a fantastic rapport, and she decided that she wanted to, you know, process some. Some different events. So she had an event that was stuck in her mind about when she was maybe 12 or so. And she has this memory of her father yelling at her when she was trying to do her maths homework at the kitchen table. And she had this very clear memory of him saying, are you stupid? And that was just kind of stuck in her head. And through the process of EMDR therapy with desensitizing that material, she was then able to come to an understanding that it was not intended as a criticism. It was actually maybe not delivered in the best way, but the intention was, I know you're really smart. Why are you having such a hard time with it? And so she was able to then integrate that with all the other positive experiences she had with her father and how good their relationship was. And then all of a sudden, she was able to see this in context of the rest of their relationship as being, okay, this. This kind of. This difficult thing got stuck. But that's not the.
That's not what all. That's not what their relationship was. And so that was really pivotal for her to be able to say that, you know, he did actually love and care about her and had confidence in her intelligence.
[00:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So it's almost like the brain Gets stuck on things even. Even without our choice. Right. It's like there's this thing that just gets lodged in there. And EMDR is a really helpful tool to dismantle that lodgment, dismantle that and. And kind of shape things differently in the brain.
Yeah.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: I can say one question that people often raise when we start to talk about EMDR is what sort of memories might this be useful for? Or, you know, how do I know if something is a good memory to target? With emdr, there's several answers to that question, I think. One is that they're often the memories that when we think of them, they come with this big flood of emotions, you know, this big emotional activation.
Often the emotions that we were feeling during that moment. And that's not normal for most of our memories. Yeah. Another indication is that they're often the kind of memories that are intrusive. You know, unlike with most of our memories where we're trying, it sort of feels like we're trying to recall something or trying to find the file somewhere in our memory bank.
These kind of memories, they come to us. You know, it's 3am in the morning and you can't sleep and, oh, here we go, I've got that memory again. Or they're sort of recurring, or they show up in flashbacks or in nightmares and so on.
Another thing associated with these memories is that we're often left with a belief about the world or people or particularly ourselves, which on a good day, we know it's not true. But on a bad day, or when something comes up for us, this negative belief about ourselves feels true. And some common ones there are that, you know, I'm. I'm not worthy, there's something wrong with me, I'm a bad person, I'm silly, I'm lazy. There's often themes around sort of a lack of control. You know, nothing I do matters.
I can't control anything.
Feelings of not being safe are a common one. And then feelings of kind of a disproportionate sense of blame or responsibility for things that happened. You know, I should have done more.
So there's a few different compasses, I guess, that we use to help people try and identify memories that EMDR would be really effective to help with.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: What about the kind of opposite. So there's no memory, but there is this kind of really strong belief of, you know, I'm not good enough or, you know, I'm a shit person. Like, is that an angle you can kind of take?
[00:08:26] Speaker C: Absolutely. So there's a specific technique that we can use in EMDR which has you experience that emotion and then we let the mind float back and identify when times in the past we might have felt that way. And that's kind of the shorthand that I use to describe it with clients is it's like memory mining. We're like figuring out what memories that you have in the past where you've felt that way. And then we kind of catalog those and then figure out, okay, well, where's the best place to start? Because EMDR says that you should go for the earliest and the worst memory and that can aim to resolve that. That feeling, if you like, of whatever it is, shame or responsibility or whatever it is.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's a really good segue there around creating safety to go to that, you know, those dark spots and that, you know, really big, big moments in someone's life. How, how does an EMDR therapist build that safety and structure so the client doesn't feel too overwhelmed or jumping in the deep end, so to speak.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: Technically, standard EMDR processing from the therapist point of view has eight phases that we go through. When I'm describing what it looks like in practice to clients, I'll often say this. It sort of feels more like there's three stages, if you like. There's a big preparation and resourcing stage which is all about talking about how it works and what it is and what it's going to look like in practice. So just trying to answer as many questions for the client as possible before we get to targeting a memory. And the other big part of that first phase or stage is working through a bunch of exercises. I kind of, I describe them as like warm up activities which give the client, well being resources that might be useful when we get to the memory processing. Often they're not actually, often we don't end up needing them, but they're just great exercises that get the mind doing some of the things that we want it to do during processing. So practicing reflection. Reflection. Noticing emotions. Noticing sensations in the body.
Yeah, so, so, okay, so that's sort of that first phase in practice. The second phase is when we invite the client to target the memory. We ask them a series of questions that are designed to kind of get them to think about the memory in a particular way.
Part of that involves, you know, feeling the feelings that are associated with the memory. Yeah. And from there we move to the bilateral stimulation, which is the thing that a lot of people associate with emdr, which is that we invite the person to Follow the rapid side to side movement of our hands. Mostly. There's other ways to do that. That's the most common way.
And so that second phase, the goal is for the person to be able to think of the memory and to get to a point where there's actually no distress.
[00:11:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Where the memories become desensitized, where they don't feel any distress in the body and the emotional rise is greatly, greatly reduced. Yeah. And then the third phase is.
It's where we try to install the positive belief in lieu of the negative belief that this memory had originally. Had originally left the person with.
That sounds sort of a bit weird and abstract, I think, to just say it out aloud. Yeah.
I'm talking to people about it.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Yeah. I guess you'd be walking through with that client about what those steps feel like, but also taking your time too, so that it sounds like there might be a little bit of, you know, home practice about, you know, noticing emotions and kind of body awareness type stuff and building that up slowly so that the client doesn't feel too bombarded or too, you know, throwing in the deep end. Yeah.
[00:12:27] Speaker C: But one thing that I do say to clients that I think is quite helpful, which is different to kind of other forms of therapy, is when we. The. The EMDR term is activate. When we activate the memory, when we're getting you to feel, you know, what's happening in your body, what emotions are coming up with this memory, it's a very short amount of time that the client has to stay in that and experiencing that before we start the bilateral stimulation. So it's different to kind of maybe a narrative therapy where, you know, you talk through the event kind of blow by blow. It's. We hold you in that space for a very limited amount of time before we start the bilateral stimulation. So it's kind of. It can be a lot less distressing way of processing things as well.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. As you both have been talking, I've been kind of matching up EMDR and the process that's kind of happening there. But I guess also the process of maybe other models like cbt. So. CBT or cognitive behavior therapy for people that don't know about it. It's about understanding maybe a core belief or a core something going on for the person and understanding how to challenge those and how to debug those. I'm wondering, you know, take your time on this one. I wonder what are the gaps that kind of EMDR does address over, say, CBT or maybe other models?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Great question.
One foundational belief that EMDR starts with. And. And I think this is part of our explanation for people about it in session, is that our minds come with this whole set of systems built in, which are helping us to process difficult things. And it's working all the time.
So every single day of our lives, things go wrong. Every single day of our lives, we will feel some range of difficult emotions. You know, a bit of anxiety, a bit of stress, a bit of insecurity, maybe a bit of frustration, bit of embarrassment, bit of hurt, all sorts of things, mostly on small bases. And for most of those difficult experience or difficult memories, the next day or a week later, they're just gone. You know, isn't that magical? Isn't that wonderful that our brain kind of like tidies that up for us and it just sort of says, hey, I'll just. I'll just take care of that for you. We don't really have to think about it. It just happens. We sort of liken it to, if I get a nick on my hand, my blood, my body just kicks into gear and says, I'll take care of that for you. You don't have to think about it. I'll just patch that up. Yeah. So likewise, there's a psychological version of that. So we call that adaptive information processing. And so one concept from EMDR is to say that in particular, moments of distress or fear, the kind of memories that we're talking about, those automatic healing processes in our mind, become blocked or overwhelmed.
And so then an interesting way to describe what does the MDR do, is to say it allows the mind to kick in and start doing all of that automatic processing that it normally does. A common metaphor, we use this to say, if I get a little cut, my body takes care of it. If I get a splinter, my body tries to take care of it, but it can't. Right. Because there's a thing that gets in the way of the healing process. So if we say that these traumatic or highly distressing memories are like a splinter that gets in the way of the healing, then EMDR sort of pulls out the splinter. If you like to let the mind's natural processing abilities kick.
[00:15:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I guess. And I guess back to cbt, a lot of the. The tools used there are very much about trying to debunk those beliefs or those thoughts related to logic. But, you know, back to our splinter, the splinter might not be log. Right. Your brain might have, you know, kind of stuck something in there that, you know, using your example, Pru, that is, is so far back and actually Quite separate to other memories of dad, other memories of connecting with dad. But for some reason, logical or not, choice or not, that's kind of stuck in there, and that's where it kind of EMDR kind of comes into play. Yeah. So it's quite a. That. That's quite a good distinction, I suppose. I'm not saying that CBT doesn't work for everyone or that we should scrap it.
Sometimes our brain does these weird and wonderful things that need different tools or different approaches.
[00:16:53] Speaker C: And EMDR is not about excluding other techniques. It's very encompassing, if you like. So they suggest that you use any.
Any modality that you're trained in and integrate that into the process. So, you know, I would still create a safe place and. And create rapport with clients and do all that foundational stuff that I would normally do and even, you know, throw in a few other things, throw in a few emotion focused therapy techniques, and that is still considered EMDR under the banner of emdr.
Yes. So it invites the clinician to use their skills and their competencies to, you know, get the best results for the clients.
[00:17:47] Speaker B: And back to your point, Adam, you know that that adaptive process or maladaptive process, it's not actually the person's choice.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: It's not like they're. They're choosing to. To soak something up or not. That's that brain kind of doing its thing.
And we might not have much understanding or even consciousness that, you know, our brain's gonna, you know, stick that thing in there in the head.
But obviously it doesn't mean it's. It's not important. It's super important.
Sorry.
[00:18:19] Speaker A: One, I think helpful way to understand the concept you're just describing is everything our mind does is protective in one way or another, actually.
Although I sort of liken it to all the fight, flight, freeze activation, you know, defense systems that we have built into our nervous system and our mind and our body.
All of the things that our mind does. Is the mind trying to protect us in some way, keeping us safe, helping us to learn the lessons?
You know, that. That distress activation that we get when we're reminded of a past event is our mind trying to say, hey, remember that horrible thing? Don't forget it. You know, make sure it doesn't happen again? Yeah. When we are worrying at a really heightened level about things that might happen in the future, where we can't stop thinking about something scary or distressing that might happen in the future, again, that's our mind trying to say, hey, you know, be Aware of this, try to plan for it, you know, try to make sure that it goes as well as it can. So this is the mind trying to help, and at times it kind of gets it wrong. You know, it's. It's making a mistake. And often we can find alternative ways to be safe and to learn the lessons of the past and so on without getting stuck in these kind of destructive processes.
[00:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, so I noticed that both of you did this kind of funny action before, and that's kind of part of the process for India. One of the things you can use as part of the process just to kind of debunk maybe a bit of the. The stigma or maybe people have seen through social media that makes EMDR seem a bit funky or weird. Can you guys kind of explain a little bit about what the kind of bilateral processing is about and a bit of the theory behind it?
[00:20:11] Speaker A: The first thing to say is that it just sounds so weird, really, that we just. We ask people to think about a distressing memory and then we kind of wave our hand around some and then they just feel better. That sounds ridiculous.
There's all sorts of theories about exactly what's happening in the mind and in the brain that makes this effective. And those theories are very, very interesting if people want to look up a bit more information about those.
The most common, I think, accessible way that I use to try to explain it is that we invite a person to, at the same time, hold in mind a difficult or distressing memory and at the same time, try to track along with the movement of our hand as we're in session. And I sort of liken this to having one foot in the memory and one foot here safe in the room. And if you like, that creates this, ideally, this ability to engage with this distressing material, this distressing memory, but from a place of safety and grounding in the room. And this supports the kind of the deactivation of that panic state or that heightened emotional state which is often happening when. Yeah, when these trauma memories are activated. So. So if you like. Yeah. Having one foot in the memory, having one foot here in the room allows the mind to sort of stabilize. The emotional reaction drops down quite quickly. People often describe a remarkable sense of distance. All of a sudden that opens up between themselves and the memory, as opposed to feeling immersed back in it like it's happening again. And from there, that. That sort of adaptive processing, all those systems that help make sense of something, process emotions and figure out how to move on, those systems can sort of kick in. There Right.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Okay.
So before we kind of set up that EMDR process and kind of, you know, sign up, I suppose, in between those three, three components, what is important for you as a counsellor to understand about the client first or important to know before stepping into that?
[00:22:20] Speaker C: So I think something that a lot of EMDR clinicians do is we kind of try and get an understanding through a survey called the mid 60. We try and get an idea about if dissociation is a tool that this person uses to keep themselves safe in difficult situations. So that just kind of changes a little bit the way that we would approach an actual bilateral stimulation session, because we need to be able to ensure, like Adam was saying, that the client's able to keep one foot in the present and one foot in the past.
So we need to, I need to check, I need to make sure that the client is able to keep one foot in the past and one foot in the present so they can stay grounded, to actually follow along with the bilateral stimulation. So it's really important that when they're accessing that really difficult information, that their natural mechanism of dissociation doesn't kind of override being able to be present. And so there's all sorts of grounding techniques and all sorts of different kind of techniques that EMDR has.
If dissociation is a big concern for the client, but yet we would just kind of tweak the way that we approach that. If, if the client has dissociation as a. As a tool in their toolkit of things to help them survive.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I would add as well, in the first session or first few sessions before we get to the actual processing itself, we're doing assessment. So we're learning as much as we can about the person. We're trying to build a sense of kind of trust and rapport and comfort as well.
And those things help us understand as much of the background as possible, the kind of, the types of resiliency or the type of vulnerability in the person.
So I, I guess, yeah, we emphasize those points to say there can be a misperception that someone says, I have a distressing memory. I'm going to sit down with someone, they're going to wiggle their fingers around and five minutes later I'll be out the door and everything will be fine. Part of those first few, that first session or first few sessions that we're meeting with someone on the path to memory processing with EMDR is about doing assessment. So asking, working through quite a lot of questions about the person's background, their sort of their family history. What's happening for them now stresses, you know, strengths and resiliencies, the way that they see themselves, beliefs about the world and so on.
And obviously, you know, the issue that's brought them to counseling in the first, first place. So that assessment is really, really important. And then we're also kind of building rapport. You know, we're building a therapeutic relationship where the person feels like they get to know us a bit and we get to know them.
[00:25:07] Speaker B: So up until now, we've talked about the process of emdr, what it kind of entails, but also the behind the scenes theory or things that, that help us understand why it works and what EMDR looks like. So let's now kind of fast forward. So you've done that, that work, that processing, you're now kind of seeing that on the other side of it. What are some of the big impacts? What are some of the takeaways that you see clients have after emdf?
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah, some of the first impacts that happen once we get to processing the memory is that the sort of emotional surge that comes when thinking about these memories actually drops away.
In many cases, not all, but in many cases, like really quickly. Like it's actually quite bizarre.
Yeah, sometimes within a matter of minutes. Yeah. So that's an immediate change. And for a lot of people that just stays, that's fairly permanent. That this memory now is just, it's this thing that happened and they can sort of consider it, they can engage it. There's this sense of distance that opens up between now and the memory. It's just this thing that happened.
So those two things are quite quick for most experiences.
That lets the sort of adaptive brain processing that we all have, that allows that to kick in and start to think about the memory differently, particularly to draw different conclusions. And so I think when I think about the lasting impact of EMDR processing, the different conclusions or beliefs that the person finds helpful, or adaptive beliefs that kind of acknowledge and make sense of that thing happened. But, but beliefs that don't continue to get in the way of things that they want to do, you know, the person that they want to be going forward, that lasting change is quite miraculous. Yeah, that's quite amazing.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: I've heard clients describe it as they feel like a new person, so much more confident and those kind of worries or shame, they've been able to let you know some of those things go and they just feel a new sense of kind of hope or new sense of.
Yeah, distance and resolution from the, the difficult memories. And that just is like a weight off their shoulders, which is quite incredible, really.
[00:27:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And self belief. I think one common experience that I've seen people have when we're doing processing is that they might have an experience where whatever it was that was happening, it was sort of a terrible workplace bullying experience or some moment of feeling tremendously unsafe with like a parent or a carer earlier in their life, their initial response to that memory might be one of a lack of safety and blame and inadequacy. And often at the end of processing those kinds of memories, the person identifies through the story. Actually, you know, God, I was strong, you know, you know, geez, I really got through that. Or ah, you know, that was, you know, yeah, that wasn't my fault. You know, the thing that happened and, and the remarkable thing, I'll just say when, when we do the training for EMDR processing, when they're asking us to sign up for the training, they say, you know, you will bring your memories to work on in the training. So it's, you know, 25 or 30 therapists sitting in a room just practicing EMDR on each other for three days. So it's pretty intense, lots of tears, and feel very bonded with these people by the end of it. But through that process, it means that every therapist that is conducting EMDR with clients has a really good insight into exactly what it feels like. Yeah, the stages and especially that, that just new, that new set of beliefs that you're left with on the other side of it, which is not just what some sort of wise therapist told you to believe. Right. It's this belief that just, it just occurs to you when you can engage with these memories in a much less distressed and kind of heightened state.
[00:29:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess we can also make a safe guess, or I'm making a safe guess here, that coming to that new stage or that a new awareness and belief about self that, that opens the door to new work that you can then do in counseling or a different goal set that you then have after. After that.
[00:29:52] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I've done a whole lot of work with a particular client around past, past issues and we've resolved a bunch of things. And now he's come to the table and he said, I've got this fear of height. I'd really like for us to work on that so we can do kind of future related stuff around, you know, phobias and things like that. So there's, you know, always more opportunities to, you know, once we've done a bunch of past work, if you want to Take a break and do some future work. Can do that too.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: One thing I'll add, EMDR's reputation is mostly around its ability to process and take the distress out of past events in a person's life. There's also less known but sort of equally powerful ways that we apply it to people's experiences in the here and now. So there might be sort of experiences of distress that are happening in a recurring way for people, and we can desensitize those and install new positive beliefs in all of them. And then there's an application of EMDR that is future looking, which is about sort of instilling a positive sense of capability and positivity. Not, not in some naive sense that everything's just going to be fine, nothing bad's ever going to happen again, but more of belief that, you know, difficult things can happen and I'll be okay. Yeah, I will navigate it. I'll be capable with whatever life throws up.
[00:31:17] Speaker B: And there's so much more applications of emdr, isn't there, around eating disorders and other kind of symptoms going on for people? We probably don't have a lot of time to go into that, but I think it's really important to, to see it more than just a trauma processing thing and more of a wider application that can be used for many purposes.
[00:31:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: So let's say that someone's watching this video or listening to this podcast and still a bit hesitant about, you know, signing off at EMDR or starting that process. Is there something that you would go ahead and encourage them to do or look out for themselves?
[00:32:01] Speaker C: I would encourage them to come and talk to us. You know, come, come and have a session and write down all your questions and then we can answer them as best we can. Because then it's a really catered approach. You know, we're talking to what is worrying you particularly. Also, you know, just do a bit of research, just do some Googling. But, you know, go to reputable sites like the EMDR association site. There's some really good material for, you know, people who are interested to learn more.
So I would say they would be the best kind of courses of action. If people have questions, I would say, you know, don't, don't go down a Google rabbit hole. Just, you know, come to someone who has been trained and knows what they're talking about. Or go to a, you know, a website that's specifically catering to information for clients.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And just to touch on what you both said before, that even if the person isn't ready for EMDR per se. There could be some tools that you use as part of emdr, like grounding and body awareness. Go use a different approach and then swing back, potentially just really based on the readiness or the okayness of the client. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: Yeah. And you can dip in and dip out, you know, so do a little bit of, you know, EMDR processing and then do some talk therapy or do some CBT and then if you want to go back and some other things. We're very flexible.
[00:33:31] Speaker B: Yeah. It really excites me when we talk about change related to counseling. And I think that's one of the foundational values of Safe Place Therapy, is that counseling needs to be transformational. It's about helping people change and see things differently and work through some of that difficult stuff. So I really want to thank you both, Adam and Prue, for adding in your information and your experience around emdr.
And if anyone is interested in reaching out to the team, you can head to our website or watch some more of our other videos that are informative and share more about what we do and who we are. So thank you both.
[00:34:17] Speaker A: Great.
[00:34:18] Speaker C: Thanks, Jim.
[00:34:19] Speaker B: Thanks everyone and take care. If you are listening or watching this and would like to watch some more episodes related to communication or emotions, or if you'd like to reach out to our team and book in a time, please please visit our website and we have our link in the description section. But please take care and bye for now.
