Confessions of a Concussed Cyclist: EMDR

April 11, 2024

After many attempts I successfully completed two years of talk therapy before my therapist took a well deserved leave of absence.  I myself took a two month break as I waited for a new therapist to begin.  Six weeks ago, I met my new therapist, a woman who specializes in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing therapy). Although talk therapy is sprinkled in, her focus is EMDR.  My previous therapist had mentioned EMDR to me but felt that 1. I wasn’t ready at the time to try it (I wasn’t in a good place) and 2. It would be extra hard on me because of my TBI.

Simply put EMDR is used to help you process something traumatic and desensitize yourself so that traumatic events no longer trigger you.  It takes away its power. Some therapists use eye movement, others use sound or tapping.  My therapist utilizes tapping but the outcome is still the same…EMDR changes your emotions, your thoughts, or behaviors that result from a traumatic event.  Sounds simple enough, right?

We eased into EMDR.  My first four appointments were just talking.  A get-to-know-you.  Then we started.  She introduced “buzzers” which put me into sensory overload so they were packed away.  We then tried a couple tapping methods before finding a good fit.  Then we started…you are asked to picture your traumatic event.  For me, two images came to mind.  1. The moment I knew I was going to be hit and 2. When I opened my eyes and I was under the driver’s SUV.  I was then asked which image stands out the most between those two.  I picked when I was under the SUV, because it lasted longer.  It was the blink of an eye that I knew I was going to be hit, but it took longer to get out from under her SUV.  You’re then asked to return to that image over and over again.  My heart raced, my stomach felt sick, I tensed up.  Even typing this out two days later, thinking about that experience, I feel sick to my stomach all over again. The requests to think of the traumatic event are short and are broken up but it is still difficult.  We laughed, I cried, we tapped, we talked, then, one of the times she asked me to return to that scene something happened that I hadn’t experienced before.  I was no longer under the SUV looking up at the exhaust, I was outside the picture, looking down at myself.  All I could see was the SUV, and my legs sticking out from under it, still clipped into my pedals.  I burst into tears.  What an awful image.  Something I’d rather not picture again, but it keeps coming back to me.  “It does get better” my therapist reassured me.  After 60 minutes I left, utterly exhausted. I found that I was very cold, despite a sunny day well into the 60’s.  My senses were heightened (everything was SO loud to me and I could smell EVERYTHING). And that night I found I had a hard time keeping my emotions in check.  I live alone, so no one had to deal with my wrath except myself.  

This is intense.  Talk therapy was very difficult for me in the beginning too but eventually, thanks to the kindest therapist, it became easier.  But as my former therapist said “talk therapy can only bring you so far.”  So enter the next phase.  I’m assured this will help in the long run.  We have goals set that we’d like EMDR to help achieve.  We have a list of many triggers that we’d like EMDR to help lessen.  I genuinely like my new therapist.  After so many bad experiences with therapy to get two wonderful, caring women in a row feels like I won the lottery. I’m still processing what happened a couple days ago and I go back in five days to do it all over again.