Show Notes
This episode focuses on different types of distress that may appear in trauma work and explores the types of distress that are most productive to metabolize.
In many transformational trauma therapies, at least part of what we are doing is transforming the distress encoded in the memory. There is distress in almost any individual traumatic memory. However, that’s not the only distress that may be present. One question that the therapist may want to ask is: what distress is productive to try to metabolize and what might be a goose chase. Cleary, we want to metabolize the distress that is in the memory, but if too much memory comes into awareness or if memory comes with too much intensity, the system—which is designed for protection and containment—may have strong defenses against that much memory content showing up.
Prisoner scenario #1
Warden goes to a specific jail cell, unlocks it, and slowly walks that prisoner down the corridor
They walk one step at a time
As long as no one panics everything is fine
The warden, if desired, can wall the prisoner straight out of the prison
Prisoner scenario #2
Warden goes to a specific jail cell, unlocks it, and they start walking down the hallway
The prisoner starts running
The system is designed to protect against that
Now, the prisoner has to deal with everything that stinks about his current situation AND now has to deal with the defenses that resulted from moving too quickly
How this looks in Flash Therapy
Overactivation or opening too many adjacent memories causes problems with containment
Problems with body activation
Problems experiencing the calm scene as a disconfirming experience
How this looks in EMDR Therapy
When we are working with clients with complex trauma, we are often working with clients with a very narrow window of tolerance… even after extensive resource development
Clients with complex trauma have well-developed and automatic survival strategies that kick in when too much distress is activated in too short of a time
Noticing the distress or shut down from the defenses against the trauma is not as productive as noticing the content in the actual memory.
We need that content to come at a digestible rate. If it doesn’t we have a goose chase. And you client is the goose and the chaser.
Other forms of distress that don’t tend to be productive in either EMDR of Flash: existential questions or agendas. Example: divorce memory turns into “Why do all my relationships not work out?” “Why does everyone I have ever loved hurt me?” “Will I every find love?”
Strategies to more effectively “walk a memory out” with clients with complex trauma
In EMDR:
Work at the intersection of what is productive and tolerable
Use the Shapiro-endorsed Video Tape Approach instead of going into the memory at the worst part
Don’t lose track of the fact that we have selected the starting memory for a reason. Anticipate that with clients with complex trauma, when the body feels a certain way, adjacent memories will want to come. It’s not a good idea to open your little tea party to a whole part of town, just because everything there has the same body-feel.
In the Four Blinks Version of Flash:
Be careful not to overactive. Most problems come from overactivation. If the video of the memory is playing when you open the door on the memory, the prisoner is running. If you are trying to make sense of the memory, the prisoner is running. If you have distress in your body from the activation, the prisoner is running. If multiple memories are connecting, the prisoner is running.
The Folger’s Coffee Can Full of Black Powder metaphor.
Many times, the most efficient ways to process memories is to take a single step/spoon full at a time. Complete that step/bite. Take the next.
More from The EMDR Podcast
Helping the Predictive Brain Update Bad Memories Turns out, the story that we’ve been telling ourselves about the neurobiology of trauma doesn’t make sense anymore based on what we have learned the past twenty-five years about brain evolution, function, structure, memory reconsolidation, neuroplasticity, and the predictive brain. How we understand perception of our external world and internal worlds and has changed profoundly. There is growing consensus around the core idea that our nervous system is predicting and constructing our reality for us. And while this has some really disturbing implications related to things like our felt sense of free will and our illusion of objective observation, it has potentially remarkable implications for how humans might heal. Predictive processing might be able to do what no other theory of mind has: explain how we construct reality and possibly even our own selves. Central to this understanding is the role that prediction error plays at all levels of abstraction. And for the purposes of what I’m talking about now, the vast majority of predictions and prediction errors occur outside of direct consciousness and awareness. Prediction errors are central to perception, memory formation, learning, movement of all types, and every experience imaginable. We can think of consciousness, awareness, experience, and our own identities as floating on top of our predictive system the way a foam mat floats in a pool.
When Complex Clients Insist on Doing EMDR Processing Immediately
Full text of this podcast is at the EMDR Podcast and EMDR365.com
EMDR Therapy shifts how you think about yourself and the world related to the memory we are working on. Why does it do this? Because that’s a lot of what healing is. Healing shifts how you think about yourself and the world, as well as lots of other things. Wounding is experiential learning and vast regions of our nervous system are organized around meaning-making in the foreground, midground, and background. Healing is also experiential learning. Broadly, in EMDR therapy and other transformational trauma therapies, it is not that difficult to help clients shift an individual memory and the cognitions associated with it.