ESTRANGEMENT & TRAUMA: EMDR SAVED MY LIFE AND IT CAN SAVE YOURS
Life. You can’t live with it, you can’t live without it. It’s the irresistibly handsome stranger who lures you with the promise of never-ending titillating adventures, a lifetime of succor to get you through rough patches and then who cunningly stabs you in the back, out of the blue, just to keep you on your toes. Sometimes the stab is just a superficial wound, a quick recovery. Other times the stab leaves you with just a pint of blood to spare from bleeding to death. Life’s a ride in a crazy fun house full of ecstatic highs and blood-curdling dips with but a moment or two to catch your breath before the next fun surprise.
Herewith, I will deal with trauma and leave someone else to write about sublime romps in beds of roses sans trauma. Today, this particular trauma is estrangement…estrangement by children of their parents for whatever real, imagined, mis-perceived, bullshit reasons they may have. Of course, children have legitimate reasons for disassociating from their parents. I mean who doesn’t want to dump their parents at least at some point when growing up but for whatever reason.
When a child makes the choice to estrange from their mother or father, or both, that, my friends, is the deep, bloody stab in the back that leaves you gasping for breath, hanging onto life as you now know it by a single dangling thread that is supposed to sustain you for the rest of your life. Your lifeline, that thread, is filthy and frayed, so thin in spots you wonder how it will hold you.
Hold you through your grief and sorrow, hold you through your days of longing for contact, hold you when your guts cry out for relief, ‘Help me, help me’ you yowl silently ‘help me’ deal with this trauma of traumas ‘help me’ to accept that my own beautiful baby hates my very guts and has deleted me from existence. Thanks, Life, you shithead.
I know that feeling well. My younger son expunged me from his life about 5 years ago, discarded me without explaining why, allowing me no chance to make my case, to make amends, to clear the air, to beg forgiveness, to appeal to his humanity. Screaming into the void, not being heard, I crumbled daily into a weeping mess.
As thoughts and feelings bubbled up, I wrote them down on pieces of paper and threw them into a bag. I wanted an anthropological record of this sickening time. Finally last year, I became my own anthropologist and exhumed those fragments of my anguished mind into a piece called Blindsided: A Raw Account of a Son’s Estrangement and Estrangement in the Time of Coronavirus Disclaimer: It is not for the fainthearted.
Writing did help lift the weight of the burden of loss and I felt lighter, better…but not better enough. My older son kept gently prodding me to seek therapy but my answer was always ‘what are they going to tell me that I don’t already know’, stuff like that until one day I decided to do it…get help.
Finding a therapist in the best of times, never mind a pandemic, is a crap shoot. There was one psychiatrist, though, I knew from years ago, someone who had helped me through one of those gnarly rough patches life throws at you, a wonderful man I trusted and would love to connect with again. It took some real sleuthing to make it through the google maze to joyfully find his name…only to find the link was to his obituary. I was gobsmacked and so sad. He was a good man.
I had to move on and find a therapist. In one of my Facebook groups for estranged parents, someone mentioned a therapist who had helped her with estrangement so I asked for his name and googled. Turns out he was in Slovenia but, hey, not a problem…everyone is just a keyboard away!
We connected and I really liked this guy…I felt totally comfortable. After a few sessions, he asked if I knew about EMDR as he felt that it would help with the trauma I was experiencing, that I couldn’t let go of. I’d never heard of EMDR so I did my research and responded that I’d like to do it.
Here’s our email communication:
ME (edited):
“Hi XXX -
EMDR…it did raise a few questions about whether the event I told you about, while extremely emotional, isn’t something that affects my day to day life. To banish the event to another corner of my brain still makes it accessible though, an impossibly sad memory. The reason I contacted you was how to deal with the estrangement, how I can accept the estrangement as a whole but not necessarily one particular event. This quote exemplifies what I wanted to get out of therapy: Time doesn’t always take away our pain or heartache. Sometimes time merely teaches us how to live with the pain.
Writing was, and is, a way for me to deal with the estrangement in a positive way so that is what I do.
As time goes on, I more easily(!) live with the pain. If EMDR helps place that pain in a closet in the brain, that is what I would like.”
THERAPIST:
“Regarding the estrangement and EMDR: EMDR can make it easier to accept the estrangement. The traumatic events surrounding the estrangement can be neutralized (becoming merely a memory) and thus the overall feeling related to estrangement becomes (almost) neutral as well. Acceptance of the situation is an often heard feedback after EMDR.”
ME: “Yes, I will be happy with acceptance. I think that’s the hardest part of all this.”
So, what exactly is EMDR? If I told you that a therapist guided you to follow a signal from left to right and right to left on your screen in a session of about 45 minutes, your completely understandable response would be “Whaaaat?”
Here’s EMDR in a nutshell but only the nutshell:
“EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences.”
Here’s a thumbnail about how it works: “EMDR therapy is an eight-phase treatment. Eye movements (or other bilateral stimulation) are used during one part of the session. After the clinician has determined which memory to target first, he asks the client to hold different aspects of that event or thought in mind and to use his eyes to track the therapist’s hand as it moves back and forth across the client’s field of vision. As this happens, for reasons believed by a Harvard researcher to be connected with the biological mechanisms involved in Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, internal associations arise and the clients begin to process the memory and disturbing feelings.
In successful EMDR therapy, the meaning of painful events is transformed on an emotional level. For instance, a rape victim shifts from feeling horror and self-disgust to holding the firm belief that, “I survived it and I am strong.” Unlike talk therapy, the insights clients gain in EMDR therapy result not so much from clinician interpretation, but from the client’s own accelerated intellectual and emotional processes.” This last sentence is important.
However, I think the following statement is misleading as it makes it sound like EMDR is a miraculous remedy that transforms you into an emotionally adept super human. Not.
“The net effect is that clients conclude EMDR therapy feeling empowered by the very experiences that once debased them. Their wounds have not just closed, they have transformed. As a natural outcome of the EMDR therapeutic process, the clients’ thoughts, feelings and behavior are all robust indicators of emotional health and resolution — all without speaking in detail or doing homework used in other therapies.”
Do not expect to get an A+ in emotional health after treatment. You can expect an A in coping which does not mean all mental health issues have been resolved. You can expect to breath easier, to feel stronger and to see life through a new, neutral lens.
Details about how the process works are on the EMDR site. Following is only my experience with EMDR.
Admittedly, I was nervous, mostly that I wouldn’t be good at following the intended eye movements and screw up but there are demonstration videos that get you comfortable with the speed of the movements and get you acclimated to the process. I was so ready to do this, to move beyond the emotional black hole ready to suck me forever into its vortex. Even my therapist noted how rapidly I was processing and finally I was ready. So ready.
I stood in front of my laptop in California, therapist in Slovenia, concentrating hard on the task before me. He guided me with a series of directives and it was over before I knew what happened. I didn’t feel different but when he asked me about the trauma, I could talk about it, for the first time, without crying.
A peaceful void took the place of my wretched innards. I was at peace in a way I hadn’t, well, had ever felt. And that was it. For me, it was one 45 minute session and I was done. Usually it takes 6–8 sessions. I don’t know why mine was over so quickly but I’ll take it. It’s now over a year later and I still haven’t shed a tear (not totally true…see following paragraph). Please remember your experience will not be like mine, it will be yours alone.
What EMDR did for me…it saved a space in my head, appropriately a locked closet, where the estrangement lives and can’t terrorize my brain. Will it break down the door and escape to tear me up one day? Only time will tell. I did have a close call.
Scrolling Netflix, I saw the movie Philomena with Judi Dench (she hates being called a national treasure but what else can you call her?!) I knew the story was about a mother looking for her lost son and I really ruminated about whether I should watch it or not but it was Judi Dench, not to mention Steve Coogan who is fucking awesome, and I figured ‘what the hell’. So I watched.
Turns out Philomena *was* a trigger. Watching Judi Dench’s face, each wrinkle recording a blow to the heart, I bloody well cried and felt familiar deep visceral pain. I was afraid this might undo EMDR and send me back to hell. I wondered how this might end up — could I bury the pain, send it back to its closet for a permanent time out?
Miraculously, I made it all the way through the movie and lived for another day. The horrifying truth of what happened to so many young Irish Catholic girls ended up making me so mad that it overrode my own pain. If you can take it, watch it.
I wonder though if the success of EMDR also curtails emotions in other situations. Often, I find there is a limit to how much I can ‘feel’, a sort of numbing of the emotional response as a way to maintain emotional control, some unintended EMDR seepage. It is called ‘Eye Movement DESENSITIZATION & Reprocessing’. In some ways, I guess that’s good because nothing seems to destabilize me, I’m pretty dispassionate…or is that just depression. This past COVID year surely didn’t help anything.
I have read so many heart wrenching posts from parents and grandparents that no matter how much support one gets gets either from strangers online, friends, potentially some sane family members, it is not enough. Estrangement is trauma, PTSD.
Estrangement is with me every single day as it is with you. How do you forget the loss of a child because that is what estrangement is. You don’t ever forget. You move on even though the lights of life are dimmer because he is not there to add his light. I miss him so.
There are so many resources online. Please check them out. I highly recommend EMDR therapy to deal with estrangement. The goal, for me, was ‘acceptance’ (reluctantly) and that is what I got. Help yourself, give EMDR a shot (this is not a paid sponsorship)…what have you got to lose?
Have you done EMDR? If you would like, please share how it was for you.
Be gentle with yourself. Breathe.
Time doesn’t always take away our pain or heartache. Sometimes time merely teaches us how to live with the pain.
