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| Mr. G and I enjoying each other at the beach |
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| About to express a humble opinion with sister Kath |
Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have.
Doris Mortman
One woman can change anything. Many women can change everything. Statement from Women for Women International
As a joke to my clients I say, "it's my humble opinion" and then tell them something that is definitely an opinion, not sure how humble it is. Nothing is more fun than having a good time with people, especially when they are unprepared for lightheartedness. People come to counseling with an anticipation of dread. So to ease their concerns, I always say, "you don't have to walk barefoot through broken glass to recover from old hurts and traumas." Unfortunately, this is not always true especially in the cases of profound loss. However, people dread rehashing terrible events in their lives and one way to avoid re traumatizing them is to use less invasive methods to resolve those traumatic events.
EMDR
Many years ago, as early as 1992, I started to read articles in my scientific journals that reported quick cures for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Naturally, having worked with trauma victims, I was highly skeptical and scoffed as I read. However, being a minimalist and leaning toward brief therapy in my practice I thought I'd give it a try. So I signed up and went to a workshop.
EMDR is the acronym for 'eye movement desensitization and reprocessing'. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, does it. Francine Shapiro who discovered this method while working with the wounded warriors from Vietnam. She was walking across campus and noticed that when she was troubled if she moved her eyes while thinking about the problem, her mood improved and she felt clearer. I'm imagining she said "what the hey". Since many of these men had intractable PTSD, "I might as well try to relieve their suffering in a shorter amount of time, and try the eye movement theory". Long story short, it work remarkably well. Then she developed a protocol and started to teach others. I was among one of the first others.
At first the workshop leaders tried to scare us into being rather rigid with their protocol and I was fairly faithful in the first several months. All that changed when I went to a study group with other psychotherapists interested in practicing the EMDR method we were taught. I quickly discovered when we paired off and I worked on trauma from my own past, that the entire format for me was cumbersome. Another discovery was that sometimes really excellent results were available without going through the entire protocol. "I see the light", I said, just like Jim Belushi in "The Blues Brothers" without the church or the back flips.
After the clients described their trauma and described their feelings surrounding that trauma, I would do a series of taps on their knees, or moving my hand in front of their eyes to make the eyes beat a la REM sleep. The technique depended on the person and how I perceived they would respond best. Some people don't like to be touched, some people find the eye movement uncomfortable, so the technique really depends on the individual's style. Next, I'd get feedback from the client to see how to proceed. After that I'd ask them to rate their distress [called the "SUDS" scale, subjective units of distress]. If the results were good, and they felt amazingly better, I'd ask them how they'd like to feel about the problem. Usually the clients came up with some fairly good ideas and solutions and if not, back we'd go delving into the distressing problem. I've used my method for years with great results.
Ever the questioner, I read about a method of getting rid of phobias, TFT, which again sounded like fiction. You guessed it, I signed up for a workshop sponsored by Group Health no less, giving some credence to what sounded like hokum. [Another post from March 28, "Having Fun With Phobias" will give you a very detailed explanation of this method.]
TFT is the acronym for Thought Field Therapy. I ask you, how do they come up with these names. Anyway what I learned was again learned best on myself. They asked for volunteers to show off the method of TFT. "Does anyone have a phobia that they would like to get rid of?" said the instructor. "Ha," I thought "I don't have any phobias." The first volunteer was a young woman who was afraid of heights. "Oh, that fear..." Anyway, we learned the protocol which is interestingly based on acupressure points and it worked in short order on me. Erasing in less than an hour a 38 year fear of heights.
As I might have mentioned in the 3/28 post I've had great success ridding people of their phobias. The hardest ones to let go of are fear of snakes. Why? If I was an anthropologist I'd suggest that evolutionally speaking we needed that fear to survive, as we were up in trees with the snakes. Also, people who grew up in places where poisonious snakes dwell have very good reason to be fearful.
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