She stopped her fingers. “Skiing helmet”, I said. “Ok, concentrate on that and follow my fingers with your eyes.”. The next moment I am crying out loud. How could I go from ‘the skiing helmet’ to this awful image a couple of decades prior? It apparently was a coherent path through my brain. From one emotional disturbing memory (hospital experience), through a less troubling one (skiing helmet) to a very intense sad remembrance in my childhood.

I experienced a time machine called EMDR. It took me through sad and disturbing memories. But the outcome after a few rounds, when you are back in the present, is surprisingly happy!

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a therapy used with post traumatic stress symptoms.

What is actually happening in a session?

Starting out with the most stressful picture of a traumatic memory, I follow the moving therapist’s fingers with my eyes. Every now and then the therapist stops and asks what I am observing. A word comes up, or sometimes only a bodily sensation or emotion. I then have to focus on that item. By also focussing on the therapists fingers moving, in the end the emotion and panick recalled by the image, or attached to the image, gets less.

If it takes too long or when my emotion is super intense, I get an extra task. For instance, I then not only follow her fingers while feeling and observing the emotion, but I also have to count backwards from 100 in steps of 7.5. My head almost explodes, but in the end the emotion drops. And after a couple of rounds, I can easily look at the initial picture without panicking or drowning in emotion.

How does EMDR work?

To me it felt as if I followed a string of memories that are connected by emotion. Often the same strong feeling (powerless, panicky, scared) came up. Sometimes I travelled to a kind of welcome rest on a small memory. Mostly followed by steep diving into strong negative emotions. Where all the memories linked by emotion? I am not sure.

Looking backward on my session, I do see the same emotional load on all of these memories and I kind of understand these memories came up. But if I upfront would have to describe what associations are made in my brain, I could not have done so. I would not even name all of them as they seemed not connected or not so significant.

I started the sessions with a hospital memory from four years ago. This seems to be a portal that connected me to older, emotionally intense experiences. Why after a few rounds of travelling through difficult memories while moving eyes and doing other cognitive tasks, the initial image feels not panicky or stressed anymore, I do not understand. I am not alone there as there is no official statement on how it works. There are a few theories, but none are agreed on.

Happy song

And the days afterwards? I suddenly have my normal energy back! I didn’t realise I felt so awful before! I knew I was often worried and very stressed by being exposed to hospital related memories. But I didn’t realise it had such an impact on my day to day life! I hear myself humming a happy song! When was the last time I was dancing through the house? Doesn’t matter, I love it!!