Wow.
My therapist and I have been preparing to use EMDR to deal with my feelings of being defective for months now. We started history gathering way back in February, but life kept popping up and I would need to talk through current issues. We’ve gone back to it periodically, even managing to work on coping and grounding strategies before my wrist surgery. Last week threw us for a loop because with my giant splint on my hand I couldn’t do the tapping required for EMDR. She said that we could use other strategies if need be, but we waited to see what things would look like this week.
I came in and showed her that my wrist was restraint free and while it is still a bit stiff and painful, I thought the tapping would work and even act as a bit of physical therapy for it along with the mental therapy. So today I had my very first EMDR session. And I’m amazed at what the mind can do.
We had decided to use the memory of me in the hospital when I was five, having my shunt surgery. While I was unsure how many of my memories from that time were actual memories or just stories I’d been told through the years, it felt like the earliest one we could find where I felt defective in some way. My therapist always asks me if I have questions, but it’s hard to have questions when you don’t know what to expect. So we jumped right in.
She asked me for an image of something particularly difficult from the memory. I struggled to think, but came up with the image of the spirometer I had to use to ensure I was taking deep breaths after surgery. I don’t know where the thought came from, but it proved to be a useful one.
She then had me close my eyes and begin butterfly tapping my hands on either side of my chest. Like this:
She had me bring up an image from this memory as I tapped and would have me pause periodically to have me say what had come up. The things I remembered were much more detailed than I had expected, as I didn’t remember any of these images previously.
Here are some of the images that came to mind:
- I remembered sitting on the large hospital bed. I was tiny compared to the bed (I was only 5 and small for my age). This image was really from the scrapbook my mother kept of my time in the hospital, I think.
- I remembered my mother carrying me through the hallway before surgery (I believe the doctors let her carry me instead of wheeling me on the bed because I was scared) and I threw up down her back.
- I remembered walking through the halls after surgery with my mom pushing the IV pole while I walked the robot cat my mother had brought to encourage me to walk.
- I remembered a family down the hall with a little girl (Rebecca) that had been hit by a car and couldn’t walk.
- I remembered curling up in the big hospital bed, crying because it hurt.
- I remembered my mom trying to get me to use the spirometer, but not wanting to because it hurt.
- I remembered my grandmother and father both making an appearance, encouraging me to be a good girl and use the spirometer.
- I remembered just wanting to go home, but being told by the nurses and my cardiologist that I needed to be a good girl and use the spirometer to help keep my lungs clear so I could go home.
- I remembered sitting with my mom on the bed, watching tv and crying when it would make me laugh.
- I remembered my mom holding the spirometer while I took slow, deep breaths to get the three balls to the top and being frustrated when I couldn’t do it, but her encouragement that I was doing great.
- I remembered the parents of the girl down the hall giving me a little stuffed lamb that I kept for years (I don’t have it anymore).
These memories are not from the pictures. Some might be from the stories I’ve been told, but the feelings of wanting to go home and being told I had to be a “good girl” and use the spirometer to get to go home were new. I’m not sure if they came out of the woodwork because I’ve been reading the book Please Yourself: How to stop people pleasing and transform the way you live by Emma Reed Turrell or if they would have come out anyway. Either way, it was very interesting to discover that my people pleasing may have found its origins in wanting to get out of the hospital and needing to make everyone else happy in order for that to happen.
I’m not sure what it tells me about my feeling defective, other than maybe feeling like I was failing at making them happy because of something flawed in me when really it’s just that I had major surgery and it freaking hurt. I was five. Of course I didn’t want to do things that hurt. But I needed to be a “good girl” for everyone and perform their tricks (walking the halls, using the spirometer, etc) to make them happy and get out of the hospital.
I’m not sure what the next session will look like, but this first one was very interesting. I had been worried I wouldn’t be able to remember anything and that I would somehow “fail” EMDR, no matter how much my therapist assured me that wasn’t possible. I guess it’s another example of me wanting to please and feeling like there’s a “right” way to do things. Perfectionism strikes again.
But I’m pleased to say that the memories that have popped up haven’t upset me. Yes, I cried while pulling them up initially, but I find them much more intriguing than personal. I guess I’m looking at them from the outside and seeing how they influenced the me I am today, rather than reliving the feelings themselves now. It’s kind of like the “container” we created when we worked on coping and grounding strategies. I’m able to take the memories out and examine them. Learn from them. Then put them back without releasing any other memories in the process. I’m very interested in how next week will go.
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