by Ella McKenzie
“Focus on the orange pen.” Mike, my therapist told me during my first EMDR therapy session. He held up an orange Paper Mate pen in a perfectly vertical position directly in front of my eyes, maybe a foot away. Internally I was laughing, feeling like the protagonist in all those movies that use hypnotherapy after a traumatic situation. But that’s where I was: the aftermath of a traumatic situation. Externally, I focused on the pen and nodded for him to start. Mike started dragging the pen through the air, left to right, back and forth, over and over again. My eyes followed, moving left to right, repeatedly. He smiled encouragingly from behind the pen, something I noticed in my peripheral, as he spoke again. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”
I spent the hour speaking through the most traumatic month of my life and then repeating it, again and again. I thought of the dark and twisted woods that I ran through and the abandoned soccer field in the middle of the night, where I could feel my knees frozen against the bleachers through my jeans and the stinging in my face from the open-palmed slap in twenty-degree weather. I focused on the way I watched myself sway in the reflection of the window as the room turned navy blue around me before I hit the ground, unconscious. I spoke his name and saw his face in my mind, over and over, until he had less power over me every time I closed my eyes.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy is a process that is used to help victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) overcome emotional trauma. “EMDR therapy research has shown that processing memories of such experiences results in the rapid amelioration of negative emotions, beliefs, and physical sensations" (Shapiro). Therapists will use eye movement, such as following a pen or blinking dots on a grid back and forth for a session while the patient talks through the memory. It centers the patient in their body and the gentle exposure to the memory gives it less power each time the memory is spoken, which calms the mental responses to the thoughts over time.
After the first session of EMDR, I walked out of my therapist's office shaky and dazed. I got into my Toyota and started the engine, staring into space. I sat there for, maybe half an hour, watching cars driving in and out of the parking lot. Ready to go home, I reversed slowly and passively into someone's big, expensive, maroon Escalade. I drove away without a thought, still reeling from the situation, not stopping to check on the damage I caused. Mike was behind the orange pen for the entire hour, giving me a supportive smile or a solemn heavy expression of sadness, letting me know he was there. Still, I felt embarrassed and ashamed for even having to talk about the situation in the first place. The guilt from speaking about what he did to me aloud was weighing heavy on my chest, suffocating me. Was it my fault? Was I telling the story wrong?
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can occur in teens and adults that experience a significant negative event. While having a great support system after the event can help mitigate the risks of developing PTSD, there are still many risk factors that can make developing PTSD more likely. For example, “Risk factors that may increase the likelihood of developing PTSD include: exposure to previous traumatic experiences, getting hurt or seeing people hurt or killed, feeling horror, helplessness, or extreme fear, having little or no social support after the event, dealing with stressors after the event, such as the loss of a loved one, pain and injury, or loss of a job or home, having a personal history or family history of mental illness or substance use” (NIMH). In my case, which qualified me for EMDR, I developed PTSD while I was living alone on the East Coast with no family or friends as a support system and a severe concussion that occurred during the first incident.
My second EMDR session was different. After I walked in and sat down, Mike handed me two gray paddles, one for my left hand and one for my right. He explained to me that they go back and forth with small vibrations in a consistent pattern, letting me focus on one side and then the other. Mike instructed me to follow the bright orange pen with my eyes and I did. He asked me to speak through the situation again, starting from when I first met him. We met in mid-March of my freshman year of college while joining our roommates for a movie night in the common room. We made the same jokes, breaking the tension when our roommates were cuddling on the couch, starting their first college relationship, and we left them alone to grab food from the dining hall, talking casually about the movie. When the session ended, I felt a small feather lift the weight off my shoulders, forcing myself to remember that I could not have known he was the man he turned into when I met him.
With EMDR being used specifically on PTSD, “results showed that vividness and emotionality ratings of the memory decreased significantly after eye movement and counting, and that eye movement produced the greatest benefit" (Kristjánsdóttir and Lee). For many of the participants in the research that went on to validate EMDR, eye movement made it easier for patients to decrease the intensity of the memories of the events when they occur. In the long term, using EMDR for PTSD helps people get more accustomed to the memories that they are living with, which can reduce some flashes that can trigger intense panic attacks.
After weeks of EMDR with Mike, I spoke through most of the story without feeling like the world was spinning around me. My eyes stayed focused on the bright pen, my brain focused on the paddles, while most of the story flew from my mouth with more ease than it had on the first day of therapy. Except for that one part. I sat down, looking at Mike nervously. He had been my therapist for the last four years, supporting me through my father leaving, my first breakup, and my high school bullying. I somehow felt ashamed to ruin his perspective on me. “On May 5th, 2021, the Friday before I left campus at the end of my freshman year, I celebrated the end of the semester with him and my roommate and a twelve-pack of beer. I drank too much, I couldn't stand straight without falling, my roommate left the room, and I let him have his way with me.” And to my surprise, Mike validated me and didn’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault.
Towards the end of EMDR, protocol instructs therapists to focus on installing future templates in their patients, specifically to tackle how they might work their way through a panic attack. A quote specifically from an EMDR Protocol guide stated, “For installing the future template, instruct the patient by asking her [or him/they] to imagine a future situation that—until now—has been avoided (or experienced with a lot of anxiety) and/or has been anticipated with extreme anxiety because of the fear of getting a panic attack” (Horst and De Jongh). This is used for patients to ensure that EMDR has long-term effects, and the patients can keep a mental strategy for if their panic attacks come back. It engrains a sense of security within their mind to keep them okay in the long run.
After my last EMDR session, I went back to college for the first semester of my sophomore year. I was doing a study-away program in Boston, away from my home college where he still was. I arrived at the apartment I was subleasing for the semester, moving in my single suitcase of belongings. That semester, living in Boston and being on my own, I finally had the confidence and self-assurance to file a Title IX case and take out a No Contact Order. I wrote out my whole story, from when he first choked me unconscious in the common room to when he took advantage of me while I was too drunk to fend for myself. I found the strength and security in my well-being to transfer colleges and stay in Boston after the semester. And while I still have small panic attacks three years later, he has no control over me anymore. He is a nobody but someone who knew me for a little over a month in April of 2021.
**
Works Cited
Guidelines for the Management of Conditions Specifically Related to Stress. World Health Organization, 2013. PubMed, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK159725/.
Kristjánsdóttir, Katrín, and Christopher William Lee. “A Comparison of Visual versus Auditory Concurrent Tasks on Reducing the Distress and Vividness of Aversive Autobiographical Memories.” Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 34–41. APA PsycNet, https://doi.org/10.1891/1933-3196.5.2.34.
Lilley, Steven A., et al. “Visuospatial Working Memory Interference with Recollections of Trauma.” The British Journal of Clinical Psychology, vol. 48, no. Pt 3, Sept. 2009, pp. 309–21. PubMed, https://doi.org/10.1348/014466508X398943.
Maxfield, Special thanks to Louise, et al. "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy.” Https://Www.Apa.Org,
Apr. 2024.
Research Overview - EMDR Institute - EYE MOVEMENT DESENSITIZATION AND REPROCESSING THERAPY. 15 Apr. 2015, https://www.emdr.com/research-overview/.
Sack, Martin, et al. “Psychophysiological Changes During EMDR and Treatment Outcome.” Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, vol. 2, no. 4, Nov. 2008, pp. 239–46. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1891/1933-3196.2.4.239.
Shapiro, Francine. “The Role of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy in Medicine: Addressing the Psychological and Physical Symptoms Stemming from Adverse Life Experiences." The Permanente Journal, vol. 18, no. 1, 2014, pp 71–77. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.7812/TPP/13-098.
Valiente-Gómez, Alicia, et al. “EMDR beyond PTSD: A Systematic Literature Review.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 8, Sept. 2017, p. 1668. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01668.
***
Ella McKenzie grew up in a small California town before moving to Boston. She was eight when she flew through the Harry Potter series at lightning speed, and ten when she started writing her first amateur novels. Thousands of pages and countless abandoned first chapters later, Ella is still writing and reading in every spare moment, likely in an empty cafe, hiding from the New England weather. She recently received her Bachelor’s in Writing and works at a higher education nonprofit in Boston.