September 4, 2011

Therapy and EMDR

There are two specific things I've done to change the dynamics in our home in the past few months. I've focused on myself more than Panda. Two strategies are weekly personal therapy and a parenting coach. The therapist and coach each know I have the other one helping me. They are 'on the same page' in terms of understanding adoption & childhood trauma.

The therapist facilitated an enormous change the first time I saw her. She helped me search for earlier times my body experienced the same feelings as when Panda raged.
Poof! It came to me that I'd experienced the same stress in high school when my mother was an active alcoholic. It felt exactly like after school and my thoughts would start wondering what I would find at home. Would my mom be passed out? Incoherant? Worse?

Awareness of this connection was life transforming for me. The memories no longer have such power over my body. Knowing what I feared took away its power. This is not to say I never cry anymore when Panda rages. I still cry occasionally. Most often I remain calm and focus on using the BCLC unconditional parenting strategies.

In subsequent sessions, she has used a technique called eye movement desensitization and reprogramming (acronym: EMDR). In short, the treatment uses bilateral body stimulation simultaneous with thinking of the trauma. Bilateral body stimulation forces the two halves of the brain to interact across the corpus callosum and store the memory in a less traumatic form. Read a brief summary about it here (or search using the acronym).

I read about EMDR quite awhile ago but didn't pursue information about local treatment options. In April, our neurological reorganization specialist suggested I read Walking Your Blues Away by Thom Hartmann. This short and easily read book is about the bilateral therapy of walking.

It felt like bilateral movement was making itself known to me at every corner. I started to look for someone who was trained in EMDR, adoption, and childhood trauma. I found such a person and am greatly happier as a result of seeing her. She is not the first therapist I've seen. However, she is the one who has facilitated the most powerful transformations for me.

I'll write about the parenting coach in another post.

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