How EMDR Therapy Changed (and Saved) My Life
Note: the following blog post is incredibly honest and transparent, includes sensitive and traumatic material, and contains strong language. It’s the honest story of a transformative season of my life, involving many intense emotions and painful circumstances.
When I was a teenager, I was raped.
(What a way to start a blog post, right?! If you don’t know the story, I wrote it all down here.)
Everything changed that night.
Shame became a heavy cloak I carried constantly. Guilt was a constant companion. Fear and anxiety were as near as my every breath as the abuse kept coming and there seemed to be no end and no escape.
For years, I’ve lived with that shame.
For years, I’ve blocked out that night, afraid if I even began to let myself remember, it would overwhelm me, end me. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it. I kept that night behind a brick wall inside, never letting myself go there, never letting anyone in, trying desperately to just forget it all had ever happened.
But it did happen.
It happened to me.
And time didn’t heal those wounds.
Time didn’t take them away.
“I had awful nightmares about ___ last night. He was hurting me and all the terror came back and I was scared shitless but I got him drunk enough that he passed out and I made a frantic break for it even though I was naked and didn’t know where he had taken me... it was awful. I woke up terrified and panicking and thinking it was all still real. I hate this. I hate him. I hate that I’m still afraid of him and affected by him so many years later. I hate the fear that creeps back in and the way it nags at me and leaves me feeling unsettled and on edge.
I fucking hate this.
I want to be free.”
Time alone wouldn’t heal this kind of hurt, this kind of fear, this shame and grief and brokenness.
Counseling sessions helped— I was going weekly for over two years— but that brick wall inside me still remained, and not even my therapist could chip away at it. I would get close to talking about that night, about that pain, but my entire body would seem to revolt in fear and I’d panic and shut down.
It was terrifying to even think about thinking about it.
It was that bad.
But there came a point last fall when my counselor asked me point blank: “How badly do you want to get better?”
(Looking back at my calendar, it turns out that session was actually the day after the nightmares I journaled about above.)
He said if I really, truly actually wanted to heal, it would be hard, but there was a kind of therapy I could try.
He went on to explain EMDR to me, a thing I had never heard of, knew nothing about, and was pretty intimidated by.
EMDR is eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and he explained more about it from a site here (which can do it better than I can). Essentially, it’s this: “a form of psychotherapy in which the person being treated is asked to recall distressing images; the therapist then directs the patient in one type of bilateral sensory input, such as side-to-side eye movements or hand tapping”
He explained that it would involve going back to my first and worst trauma (the night I was raped) and reliving it in my mind as a therapist (not him, but another person at the same center) controlled buzzing sensors under my legs to ground my body and brain to the physical space.
The idea quite honestly scared the shit out of me.
But also?
I was desperate.
I knew I was stuck. I knew that night was too overwhelming for me to work through on my own, too terrifying to even try to discuss in a normal 45-minute counseling session. I knew I needed help, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to find true freedom and a way to move forward until I first went back.
So, I said yes to EMDR.
I sent the email asking the new therapist how to get started, I filled out new paperwork, and I prayed like hell as I waited for the time to come.
“Today, I have my first appointment with *new therapist* to start EMDR. My last appointment with *regular therapist* for a while was last week, and it hit me harder than I expected. For two and a half years, I’ve seen him every week. We have worked through so much and built a strong relationship of trust and the rhythm of it has been so good for me. It feels scary to have to let go of that for this season to step into this new kind of therapy that I know little about and am intimidated by.
But overall, I feel hopeful and ready. I want to fight for healing and freedom. I want to let go. I want to work through it all and be able to step forward leaving the weight of the past behind.
Lord— draw near. Ease my anxiety about what today’s appointment will be like. Help me to be fully present and able to engage wholly in the process. Be with me in it, Spirit, I need you. I trust you. Amen.””
I felt the fear, and I stepped forward in faith anyway.
Watch my instagram stories from October 23, 2019:
During that first appointment, we talked about the context of my trauma, and while it was daunting to open up about it to a new therapist, she was warm and kind and gentle with me, and I trusted her easily. We spent time doing some foundational work, building visualization techniques and tools that would come to serve me both throughout the EMDR process and beyond. We worked through building a safe space in my mind, a guardian figure to go through the process with me, and a container to keep the painful memories stored in between sessions.
These things seemed woo-woo and weird at first, but came to be incredibly helpful in the days and weeks to come. I’m grateful in hindsight that I leaned in and didn’t resist the uncomfortable, because it was important to the process and valuable to work through.
Watch my instagram stories from November 2, 2019:
The following week, the “real” EMDR sessions began.
The session was to look like this: I would sit in a chair near my therapist, with two Thera-tappers under my legs that would buzz at varying speeds and intensities based on how my therapist turned her dial. These buzzers would help ground my body and brain to that room, and would help me to rewire my brain to make new connections in the places of trauma. I would internally “play the movie” of that first and worst trauma, starting the scene at the beginning and running it all the way through. I wouldn’t speak or have to tell the story out loud, I would just close my eyes and play it out in my mind. The goal was not to go back to that memory as the one in the scene, but as an observer watching it from outside of it. My therapist would pause occasionally to check in, to ask questions, and to ask me to share what I was observing. Before we started, she asked me to rate my level of disturbance on a scale from 1-10, and we would return to that scale after every “playing” of the scene. The goal was to get my disturbance level down to a zero by the end.
She said most clients didn’t need more than 3 sessions, and I felt sure I would be the first to need dozens, if not hundreds. I couldn’t imagine how just a few hours of this work would bring me from trauma locked behind a brick wall to somehow being free.
As part of our prep work, we had talked about the core belief I was coming into this journey with. Mine was this: I’m too broken to be loved. Oof. I believed it with every fiber of my being.
Here’s what I wrote in my journal after the first session:
“I started EMDR last Friday.
90 minutes, wrapped in a big, brown furry blanket, Thera-tappers buzzing under my legs. I was so anxious beforehand, knowing only vaguely what to expect but having no actual idea what would happen as soon as I opened that closed door in my mind that I’ve kept closed for years. I felt ready but nervous.
The first time playing through the scene in my mind, it was like I was reliving it, and it was horrible. I couldn’t stop feeling the weight of his body on me and remembering how awful it all was. When she asked what I was observing, I could only just cry and shake my head and say how mad I was at my self and at him.
The second time through was similar— I was so caught up in remembering that I wasn’t observing so much as I was trying to relive it to piece it all together. I kept saying how hard it was to remember and that I didn’t trust what I was remembering, and didn’t know how to do this. I felt like I wasn’t doing it right and I didn’t know how to keep going and keep replaying it all. She was so gentle and kind and kept guiding me with questions and coaching me through setting the scene again to run it through.
The third time through, I felt myself switch roles to be the observer. I was standing in the corner of the room, watching it all play out instead of experiencing it. I was referring to young me as “she” and “her” and I wasn’t in it in the same way.
It’s so wild to me how my thinking started to change.
I kept realizing how young she was, how hard she was fighting and how she was doing everything she knew how to do. How horrible it all was— how gut wrenching and heartbreaking it was to watch.
It was awful to be that observer and to have to watch all that happen to young me. I don’t even have words for it.
But I started to feel such love and tenderness toward her. Such compassion. I felt angry on her behalf and wanted to yank him off of her and make it stop— I felt so protective of her and so hurt for her. I could see the scene more clearly and the things I was observing weren’t things about the room or the details so much, but my heart toward young me. It felt huge.
I started at a 9 on the 1-10 scale for disturbance level, went up to a 10, down to an 8, and then got to a 5. She asked what it would take to get it lower, and I knew I needed to take my guardian in with me.
It was such a comfort having him there. His presence made me (even me as the observer) feel more safe and protected. His presence brought light where there had been only darkness. He made me feel less alone. It made a massive difference, especially knowing he could take ___ down in a heartbeat. Even though it didn’t change what was happening in the scene, just knowing he was there by my side was so healing. The whole process (playing through the whole scene 6 times) was SO MUCH.
Emotional.
Vulnerable.
Terrifying.
Healing.
Redemptive.
Heart wrenching.
Horrible.
Hopeful.
Incredibly hard.
And yet... beautifully holy.
I went back to the very worst night of my life. I looked my trauma square in the eye. I faced the fear. I shone a light into the darkness. I pushed back the shame. It didn’t kill me like I thought it would.
Instead, it helped heal me. I found hope there. I found grace for that young girl that I’ve never been able to give her before. I found new love for her— then and now.
I don’t think I’ll ever fully have words for it all.
But God... thank you.
Thank you.
Amen.”
The days that followed after that first session were… weird.
Before I left the room after that first session, we went back to the visualization technique of the container, using it to store the unresolved memories until our next session. When it came to mind, I was to remember that container and know that the memories were stored there and couldn’t come out until the next time, so I could let them stay there and not let them derail my days.
It was incredibly helpful to have this tool in my arsenal, especially because SO MUCH had happened and it was a lot to process, and would have been a lot to try to keep working through on my own. Ultimately, I tried to keep it safely stored away until I was back at the session where I could face it with help and with support.
It was bizarre to go out of EMDR back into normal life, knowing that SO MUCH had happened and so much was still going to happen…
And then came session two.
You all.
It’s been several months since this whole thing happened and I am STILL trying to figure out how to wrap words around it.
I don’t know what to say… except God.
God.
God showed up in the middle of my darkness and made it light.
God showed up in my hurt and healed me.
God showed up in the brokenness and restored it to such beauty.
God parted what had felt like a Red Sea before me, and God made a way where I could not see a way.
God alone.
I walked into that second session knowing I could do it, that I could face that night and live to see the other side of it. I knew that this work of EMDR therapy worked, that it had helped my level of disturbance go down. I knew it was possible now that God could meet me in the trauma and walk through it with me and bring me out the other side.
So I went in more bravely, more sure, more ready.
I didn’t need the big, brown blanket. I knew where to put the buzzers under my legs. I knew how to unlock the container to pull the memories back out, knew how to start the movie in my mind, knew that I could detach from the girl in the bed to be the observer in the corner of the room.
So I played the scene again. My level of disturbance was lower, down to a 3 now. She asked what I would need to make it lower, and I knew— I needed to go in, just one more time, and take my guardian with me again.
So I did. And I played the scene again.
And she asked me what I observed.
What I realized as I answered? I’ll never forget it. It still brings me chills.
The corner of the room where I stood as the observer, the corner where I stood next to the guardian, this figure that represented Christ and a God who is good and strong and mighty to save, was the same corner of the room I remember staring at desperately as the girl pinned down in that bed. She didn’t know then, but I knew in that moment, that the corner where she stared, crying and shattering open inside as a boy forced himself inside her and she begged for it all to stop, that same corner is where the guardian stood, light shining into the darkness, his heart shattering too.
It all broke open within me as I told my therapist.
(It’s breaking open in me again now as I finally write it down.)
It all became so clear to me.
I was never alone.
I was never abandoned.
God didn’t forget me that night.
God wasn’t mad at me for not stopping ___ from raping me.
God was with me.
God’s heart was breaking as he saw mine shatter.
God was weeping with me.
And that time, that final time of playing the scene out in my mind, I saw my guardian, my God, wrap that sweet girl up in a blanket to cover her nakedness. I watched my guardian wrap his arms around her in such gentle, tender love, and shield her as she fled from the room, climbed the hill outside the basement, and collapsed in the drivers seat in tears. I watched my guardian protect her, and I saw a faint shimmer of light still inside her this time.
Before, it was the darkest I had ever seen her, sitting in that car alone after finally breaking free from ___. Before, she seemed completely destroyed, torn apart, fractured into pieces.
But now, she was sheltered. She was shielded.
She wasn’t alone.
She was never alone.
That was all I needed.
That last time through the scene was the last time.
My level of disturbance was zero.
I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. I hadn’t even realized just how heavy it had been all these years.
I felt light, weightless, like I could burst with joy and gratitude.
God, God, God.
What a gift.
My life forever changed the night I was raped.
And my life forever changed again the day I finished EMDR and found freedom from the chains that had bound me in shame and guilt and fear for years.
I found freedom. I found healing. I found hope. I found grace for the younger me who I had felt such anger and resentment toward for years. I found anger toward my rapist for his cruelty, and I let it go, too. I found kindness for my younger self who was doing all she could, all she knew. I found out that not even reliving and remember the worst trauma could kill me. I found courage from Christ alone to face all of my worst fears. I found love for young me. I found God in the very place I thought God had abandoned me. I found forgiveness. I found strength to carry on, and to let that cloak of shame go, and to step forward into a life more abundant and free that God has set before me.
My new core belief?
Fully seen. Fully loved.
This is what I painted to celebrate and remind myself of this victory:
These words will never be enough.
My praise to my God who saves will never be enough.
I’m free. No longer bound, no more chains holding me. My soul is resting, it’s such a blessing. Praise the Lord, hallelujah, I’m free.
April 2021 marked my four-year anniversary of starting counseling— a milestone I never imagined I’d hit, but I’m so grateful for. As I reflected with my counselor on all that the past four years have held, I was struck by truly how much has changed, and how much the Lord has done in myself and in my life. My counselor gave me the homework assignment of writing a letter to myself four years ago— so here it is.