I would encourage anyone dealing with grief, anxiety, sadness, flashbacks and the like to look these therapies up. EMDR starts with a headset with tones alternating between ears. and two little hand things that alternately vibrate. The claim is that it balances left and right brain activity and facilitates emotional integration. That part, I can’t say helped or didn’t.
MDEM, though, consists in a bunch of colored sticks that she moved through my field of vision slowly, and damned if I didn’t light up with some powerful stuff at certain points. I pulled out feelings I had no idea were there, and fragments of memories I still can’t decipher, but which were also new to me. I had powerful physical reactions, of the sort I have had in Holotropic Breathwork.
Another iteration of EMDR is just more or less the therapist waving a wand with a colored tip–she had a plastic yellow flower–back and forth while I went into specific memories or sensations. Again, powerful physical reactions.
Whatever I “have” is apparently pretty deep, because a few run-throughs with the wand normally fixes whatever it is that ails a person, and we did it 15-20 times, and I was still getting symptoms.
I will say this about me, though: my emotional pain tolerance is through the roof. I honestly think this is my single most valuable trait as a thought worker, other than having a relatively high baseline intelligence.
Most people can’t stand the idea of being mocked, or being alone in a belief, or dwelling for a long time on violent and unpleasant things, or being confused for a long time without giving up. I can do all of these things, often, and without worrying about it, or feeling sorry for myself. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. My hope for therapy is simply that I retain those traits while adding back in power I have lost to unresolved trauma and grief.
I can only imagine what I will be capable of when I am not carrying around a 200 pound weight.