I have amazing, exciting news and a raving recommendation to share.
SHORT VERSION: I’ve been seeing an EMDR therapist to heal past traumas and I just cancelled my reoccurring appointment because I ran out of traumas to neutralize. Things I’ve been struggling with all my life, things I’ve been in counselling for the past few years are no longer charged with emotion and subconsciously running unwanted patterns in my life. If I hadn’t experienced it myself, I wouldn’t believe it was possible. What’s more is that all the work was done through zoom meetings. If you have childhood trauma, anxiety, or other emotionally charged memories following you around, I HIGHLY recommend my (former!) EMDR therapist: Tiffany Cornelis from the Healing Center. Her number: 786-664-8791. Also, here’s The Healing Center’s front desk: 702-505-1280
LONG VERSION: On my 5-month PCT hike from Mexico to Canada, I ran into another hiker who recommended a book called “The Body Keeps The Score.” I got the audiobook, listened to it, and it was fascinating. It’s basically the author recapping his lifelong career of being dedicated to helping veterans with PTSD. He talks about how they tried so many techniques and the one that rose to the top is called EMDR. EMDR was so different that they originally thought it was woo-woo BS. He actually used the EMDR technique for the “control group” in his experiments for the people who weren’t getting the “real treatment”. He wanted the people in the control group to feel like they were getting/doing something too, so they had them do EMDR. But the EMDR control group was working and yielding results. They pivoted to focus on researching EMDR and were able to actually start helping veterans of war work through and release their PTSD. Then they started applying the technique to people with childhood trauma and found that it also worked for them too. PTSD and childhood trauma are stored in similar ways in the body and brain.
The PCT hike, which is over 2,000 miles for 5 months, gives you a lot of time to face your self, your past, and your thoughts. One of the things I realized was how much BS from my childhood has subconsciously followed me around and meddled with my life as unhelpful patterns, anxieties, and fears. I made a commitment to myself that I would start doing each and every therapy technique out there once I got back to Vegas because I was sick and tired of little moments from my past ruling my present day patterns. Then I read The Body Keeps The Score and decided EMDR would be the first technique I’d try. –and by “try”, I mean, “I was committed to spending $100/week on various techniques for all long as it took to find the one that would free me from childhood BS.”
Let me be transparent here. My “childhood trauma” was not physical abuse or sexual abuse. My childhood trauma was neglect, abandonment, emotional abuse, and verbal abuse. I didn’t even recognize it as abuse because, from my point of view, it was normal that my parents were busy and I was left to figure out the world for myself. It lead me to become a very independent adult with an incredible work ethic who knew nothing about social interactions, was afraid of emotions, was craving any type of human connection, and had zero boundaries.
When I got back to Vegas, I found an EMDR therapist, Tiffany Cornelis, and signed up for a weekly appointment.
The first session, a zoom call, was “getting to know me” or gathering data on where I was at and what I wanted to work through and heal. She had a list of 25-30 toxic statement that she read to me one by one. With each statement I’d rate it from 1=false to 7=true. The statements were things like: “I’m a burden”; “I’m unwanted”; “I always mess things up”; “I need to be perfect”; “No one loves me”; “I can’t count on anyone,” etc. I rated many as 1=false and a handful of them 7=true. We then walked through some of my memories for the statements that I rated higher than a 1. By the end of the session, she said we had a few “treatment plans”. Each plan was a an emotion or toxic statement and a chain of emotionally charged memories that went along with the toxic emotion or statement.
After that, each session, all zoom calls, were basically the same. She would recap the things I had rated and the memories I mentioned, then she asked me which one I wanted to work on today. I always picked the strongest emotionally charge thing to work on. Then we would recount the emotion and/or the memories until I was “all up in it” again and my heart was pounding with my chest tightened. Then she would do the EMDR technique a minute or two at a time. Every time she did the technique, the emotional charge would evaporate a little. She’d ask me, on a scale from 1 to 10, how strong is this emotion/memory for you right now. If I said anything other than zero, she’d do the EMDR technique again until the emotion/memory was “neutralized”. Then she would do the technique a couple times with a positive/joyful emotion and replace the negative memory with positive things.
For example, I had a memory of my step mother randomly bursting into the room and yelling at my sister and I for being to loud. I was anywhere from ages 5 to 8. We were playing too loud and we’d get punished, randomly, for years. As an adult, I realize my dad was working the night shift and needed to sleep in. As an adult I realize that we were just kids and were never given any direction on what would be a quiet way to play. As an adult I realize these kids were setup to fail and be punished for it. But knowing this does not change the fact that I grew up to be an introvert who chooses quiet hobbies and doesn’t like to be around loud people —and will actually try to get extraverts to tone it down before we “get in trouble.”
After doing the EMDR technique on this specific memory, the image faded in my mind to someone coming in the room but it’s like she was on mute, and her face was fuzzy, and then the whole memory was fuzzy. The thought that previously caused my pulse to race and my chest to tighten was now something I could barely bring up in my mind’s eye. It was just an image and it had no emotions attached to it. Then Tiffany asked if anything good was going on at that point in my life and I said, yeah, my sister and I were playing and having fun before my step mother burst in again and again. So we continued the EMDR with the thought of having fun with my sister. Today, when I trying to bring up the memory of getting randomly yelled at and punished for years, or the memories of just being in that specific house, instead I remember all the fun my sister and I had. Instead of adults yelling, I now hear my sister giggling. Instead of a racing pulse and a tight chest, I smile and feel love for my sister.
Slowly my day to day behavior has changed. I don’t hold back as much. Loud people don’t set me on edge the way they used to. It’s subtle, but it’s different. My patterns started melting and changing because the trauma that required them to exist has evaporated.
I’m a skeptic. I live my life as a skeptic. I need evidence before I believe things. If I hadn’t experienced the results of EMDR for myself I would have dismissed it as a hoax because it looks a lot like hypnosis. But I have experienced it and the evidence is undeniable for me. The concept behind EMDR is based on: in REM sleep, our brain processes stuff. Sometimes emotional things get stuck and not processed. So our brain is doomed to repeat and replay the memory again and again because it was never properly processed. EMDR looks like hypnosis where you follow something left-right left-right with your eyes. The idea is, the eye movement is triggering the same stuff that REM sleep triggers and you brain is simply doing it’s thing. It’s processing. For me, that’s what it felt like. I’d be emotional, I’d do the EMDR for a minute, and it’s like my brain was just realizing stuff and letting go of the emotion. My brain would also start giving me new conclusions. Words would just fall out of my mouth when Tiffany asked how I was feeling. I would speak simple conclusions as if they were Ah-ha moments. Things like “we were just kids”, “no one ever gave us a quiet way to play”. –Logically, I knew these things, but suddenly it was like my emotions caught up to the logical side of my brain. I would say these things and my emotions were in alignment. My brain also started clearly putting things in the past. “that was a long time ago,” “that nolonger part of my life” … and again, it was my emotions talking and believing in the words, not my logical side.
After many session and many chains of emotional memories, today happened. I found myself in a session where I was struggling to find trauma charged emotions or memories. We went through the 30 toxic statements again and I calmly rated each statement as a 1=false. More so! Every statement she read, I would hear my mind say the opposite. She read “I am weak” and my mind instantly chimed in, “nope. I’m powerful,” in a nonchalant, matter-of-fact tone. I rated all of the statement 1=false and then said “wow!” I was baffled. I really tried to find a trauma memory for 30 minutes and couldn’t. After today’s EMDR appointment with Tiffany Cornelis, it became very clear that we have run out of stuff to work through. I cancelled my reoccurring weekly EMDR appointment because the stuff that I had been going to a therapist to work on for the last 5 years has now evaporated.
I want everyone to know this tool is out there. I want everyone to have a chance to see if this tool works for them. I encourage you to commit to 4 session and commit to trusting the process and see what happens.
My (former) EMDR therapist: Tiffany Cornelis from the Healing Center. Her number: 786-664-8791. Also, here’s The Healing Center’s front desk: 702-505-1280