Music. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy, the podcast that empowers you to transform life's challenges into opportunities for personal growth and healthier relationships. We're your hosts, Tim and Ruth Olson, licensed marriage and family therapists and trauma experts. As experienced therapists with backgrounds in addressing trauma and mental health disorders, we believe there is hope and there certainly is healing.
We've spent our lives supporting people through the ups and downs, and we want to share these insights with you. Together, we'll unravel the layers of personal and building healthy relationships. Each week, we'll bring you engaging conversations, expert insights, and practical strategies to help you heal from the past, foster healthy communication, and develop enduring love.
This podcast is your guide to transforming adversity into triumph, healing wounds and past trauma, gaining wisdom and insight, and creating meaningful, fulfilling connections. So if you're here to heal, to better understand yourself or your relationships, you're in the right place. So sit back, get comfortable, bring your trauma and your drama, and let's start healing. Welcome to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. Music.
Hi everyone, welcome back to Mr. and Mrs. Therapy Podcast. We're so glad that you're here with us today. At this time in the new year, it's a great time to reset and start new. And so in the last episode, we talked about negative beliefs and the importance of shifting them for personal growth. And one great way to be able to shift those negative beliefs and really heal
from things that you've experienced is through EMDR. So today we're going to talk about healing trauma and just using EMDR in this new year. So as you reflect on the past year, you want to be able to identify unprocessed hurts or triggers and consider how EMDR therapy can help aid in healing all that. So for a lot of us, the new year is just a natural time to take stock of where we are emotionally. And I would say in all different areas. So physically, emotionally,
spiritually, relationally. But if there's underlying trauma or painful memories that we haven't addressed, those can block us from moving forward with clarity and hope. And EMDR, which stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, is our favorite type of therapy to be able to help process these issues and really help you heal at a deep level.
So in this episode, we're going to walk through how to approach just reflecting on the past year, specifically with trauma in mind, using questions that will help you see where you might still be holding on to emotional wounds. And then we'll explore the ways EMDR can provide a tangible path toward releasing and really healing those painful experiences. I think starting off this new year in a reflection of last year and just looking at things that didn't go well.
We just came out of the holiday season, out of Christmas, and we're just barely past the new year here. And a lot of times that can be a very difficult time for people because they're around family that they might have trauma with and difficulties with. And if that's something that you don't want to be such a struggle for you next year. If you start now, by the time next year rolls around, going through Thanksgiving and Christmas and the New Year's can be a whole different experience for you.
Even though your family members might not change, your ability to be emotionally tough and resilient can absolutely change from this year to next year. So let's start off by helping you guys to do a little bit of reflection on last year. So what we want you to do is sit down and think about moments or events in the last year that triggered unexpected anxieties, sadness, or even anger.
Are there memories that keep replaying in your mind, especially if you're trying to go to bed or if you're just walking throughout the day and it just keeps popping up? Or did you see any patterns in your relationships that may be codependent tendencies or places where you might have emotionally shut down?
Right. Those are all really good questions to think through, because I think oftentimes we think of trauma as something extremely severe, but it can also be smaller scale experiences like that that leave deep emotional scars over time. Like an ongoing conflict at work, repeated rejection, or like you mentioned, Tim, being in a codependent relationship. So as you sit down, this end of the year reflection can really shine a light on how these patterns have impacted us day to day.
And one of the best ways that we can do this is through journaling. So, for instance, if you set aside 10 to 15 minutes to jot down significant moments, whether positive or negative, that stand out in your memory, then note how they made you feel. This can help us see which events or dynamics might still be contributing to anxiety, depression, or unhealthy relationship patterns.
Actually, what we'll do is in our Facebook group, we will post a worksheet we generally give to our clients, and it's going to have a list of 20-some statements that generally are places where people feel trauma. And what you can do is you can sit down and you can start filling out this worksheet and it will give you a better idea of places where you might actually have some lingering negative feelings or experience.
The other thing I think that you can do is you can sit down with your friend or your spouse, and you might even want to consider recording this conversation with them where they're giving you a little bit of perspective in places where you might be struggling that they notice that maybe are so common or normal for you, but that when you get an outside perspective, you realize, ooh, actually, that's not so normal or that is something that you really struggle with.
And when you get that information it can really help you to identify that the areas you need to work on as a matter of fact it is a little bit of a joke i like to tell my clients when we start working through emdr a little bit and we start uncovering all these trauma i kind of tease a little bit and i say you know you had to come to therapy to find out how really messed up you were and that's kind of the truth is you're
walking around and you might be struggling with and dealing with a lot of difficulty but because you've been living with that trauma for so long It just feels normal. But then when you go in and you get that trauma actually healed and work through, then all of a sudden you're like, oh, man, that wasn't normal at all. And now I got this new level of normal.
As a matter of fact, that's a point where a lot of times people will drop out of therapy because they get to such a better spot than they were that they're like, oh, I'm doing great. They're doing much better than they were before we worked on it, but actually a lot of times there is still a lot more work that could be done. So you sat down now and you have reflected and you've looked through the past year and have identified a couple of areas where you've experienced some emotional
wound. So now what do you do with that? So let's talk a little bit about EMDR. And for those who might be new to the concept, EMDR is a type of therapy that helps the brain reprocess traumatic and disturbing memories so that they lose the emotional charge that they once had. So as EMDR trained therapists, we would typically guide you through recalling the painful memory while engaging in some form of bilateral stimulation. So it initially started out with eye movements.
And that's why the EM part of EMDR stands for eye movements. But really, we're looking for any kind of bilateral stimulation. So it could be tapping on your knees, left, right, left, right, or doing the butterfly hug and tapping that way. We have buzzers that we use when we're in person, which buzzes on left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand. There's headphones. So there's a lot of different ways you can get this bilateral stimulation. But that's really what we're looking for.
And the idea is that this process helps the brain kind of recatalog that memory from an active trauma state to a more neutral or resolved state. And I think one of the important things to note about EMDR and about the trauma that you receive is that a lot of times it's not something you can just think away. A lot of times these are deep-rooted negative belief systems that are operating in our subconscious or unconscious. They're things that your brain has learned, these are dangerous points.
These are scary points. And I want to protect you from these danger points. But when you go through the EMDR process, it really helps to kind of tame and reprogram the brain from thinking about it as an ongoing threat, just like you were saying, into a past threat. This is something that was a threat in the past, and is no longer a threat. And a lot of times this comes up from our childhood experiences.
And so for example, when I was talking about the holidays and Christmas and it being a rough time for people, A lot of times that originates from being a child and being powerless and being stuck in a difficult situation and not being able to extricate yourself from that. But then as an adult, you grow up and now you have the power to leave or you have the power to set boundaries, but then you still feel like you're this powerless or helpless child.
And so what that's doing is it's causing you to relive this negative childhood experience in the present day in your adult body. But when you go through the EMDR process, when now all of a sudden you can feel, oh, I have this autonomy, I can leave.
When your family is making disparaging remarks or when they're being difficult to be around or acting in inappropriate ways, all of a sudden that won't have nearly as much negative impact on you if now all of a sudden you believe, well, I am in control.
I can just leave and I don't have to be here. And what I've seen from a lot of my clients when we've worked on this childhood and family trauma is that when they then go around to their relative's house and they're visiting them, their relatives haven't changed at all. But the effect that their relatives now have on them is dramatically diminished because now, just like you were saying, Ruth, it's a past trauma. It's a passive trauma, not an active trauma.
And now you can go on your life and feel wildly different about the exact same experiences and you actually can enjoy those experiences a whole lot more than you ever would have been able to before. And even when I'm saying this right now, some of you may be listening and be like, well, you don't know my family and I could never be okay with them. But that's the power of EMDR. As much as you may not believe that that's possible, it's something that we walk our clients through every single day.
And one crucial aspect here is that EMDR isn't just for big T traumas like serious accidents or abuse. It can also help with smaller repeated traumas Like bullying, emotional neglect, the lingering effects of codependent relationships, bad breakups. Those experiences might not always be labeled as trauma in everyday language, but they can still create those negative beliefs that we were talking about in the last episode, like I'm not worthy or I can't trust anyone.
And again, you might not be thinking those negative beliefs in your mind all the time, but you're reacting as though they're true. And you have these large emotional waves that wash over you when those negative belief systems get poked at. And you and I were just actually talking about this week how it's so cool to see in EMDR memories that come up that most people wouldn't bring up in therapy because it just seems like a little blip in time.
Like, it's not that important, but there are images or memories or experiences that we go through that really are important, but we don't give them credit. So in normal talk therapy, they typically wouldn't come up as something that needed to be processed. Oh, for sure. As a matter of fact, it's one of my favorite stories because it really taught me a lot going through EMDR. I had this one client who was struggling with agoraphobia, which is a fear of
going outside. suicide and we worked on all these big T traumas, all these things that we thought might be linked to it, and none of them had any impact. And then we found this little dinky tiny memory after we had run out of memories. We found this little one that barely was a blip on the scale. And we worked on that. And this person's agoraphobia was cured after that. They literally didn't have problem going outside their house after that.
And so when you think about something that that's small, you're like, oh, I would never talk about that in therapy. But then when you address that through EMDR, it can have a dramatic effect on your everyday life. Now, I will say typically that's not how it normally goes. Normally when you work on a bigger trauma, those are the things that cause major metafunctions in your regular everyday behavior.
But it can also be something that's very small. And that's what EMDR really seeks to is like, we're going to find anything that's causing any kind of problem. And we're going to work at healing and resolving that because at the end of the day, that's something that could create a grand benefit for you. So let's bridge this year-end reflection with EMDR therapy.
First, you're going to think of that reflection and all the questions that you asked yourself that helped you to identify the specific events or triggers you might want to address in therapy as an emotional roadmap. You can even create a list of hotspots that bring up intense emotional responses.
So you may not even know where that stems from, but it's just something that just keeps coming up and you're like, I don't know why I keep reacting this way, even though I know in my mind, okay, I want to act this way. But when I'm in the situation, I feel differently and I just react. Those are great clues that in situations like that, that just keep coming up again and again.
But even those intense emotional responses, even though you don't know where they stem from, you want to make sure you jot them down because then as you're seeing an EMDR therapist, they can kind of coach you and walk you through that emotional roadmap that you've created. And they can help you to dig deeper and find other landmines that are causing problems for you now or may cause problems for you in the future.
And so if you met with Tim and I and you brought this list up, it gives us a starting point so that as we meet with you in coaching sessions, it can be more focused. So for instance, if you notice just reoccurring thoughts around a childhood memory, maybe you felt dismissed or unsafe, we can help you through EMGR process that memory so it no longer rules your emotional state in the present.
So kind of like Tim was talking about, if you experienced something as a child and you felt unsafe, and even though you're not in that situation now, you may know in your mind and you may understand cognitively, hey, I'm safe. This person isn't the same as when this other thing happened. And you know that in your mind. You can recite that to someone else. But whenever you're in that situation or whenever you're with that person, you feel differently and you're just reacting.
And so EMDR will help you process that memory so that you can find the benefit of feeling free from that. Now, the next thing we're going to talk about, and I do want to put a little bit of a caveat on here, a little bit of a warning. If you're going to proceed and you're going to do this next thing we talk about, there's a possibility it could take you into what's called a deep dive, where it could drop you deeply into negative emotions.
So you do want to be very careful if you want to try to practice this. We're going to talk a little bit about that you can do this, but be careful because it's very hard to predict once you start doing EMDR where it's actually going to take you. It may take you a million miles away from where it starts. And most of the time, people are free and safe to do this, but sometimes people really can get caught off guard with how hard they can get hit with their motion.
But what you can do is even a little bit of some self-EMDR. So when you are starting off in a situation and you notice you're getting emotional, you can do some of this bilateral stimulation where you're tapping back and forth, left and right, pretty quickly on your knees when a situation comes up. And it can help you to get some insight. Now, one of the things, though, like I said, when you're going into EMDR, it can be a very deeply emotional experience.
Sometimes people might have disassociative experiences. I'd say that's more on the rare side. That's not super common. But if you're going to go down this route, we want you to be fully aware that there is some emotional danger that could be potentially involved in it. So, again, if you're talking to your spouse and you get into a fight and you get really upset and you're not exactly sure why, you can stop and you can do some tapping back and forth left and right.
Or if, for example, you're scared of needles and you've got to go in and get a shot or something like that, while you're doing that, you can be doing the tapping to help you maintain more of a sense of calm. Or actually, another experience is at the dentist when they're working on your mouth and they're just doing a cleaning. You can do the tapping when that's happening, too, and that can help you maintain more of a sense of calm in the midst of something that can be very uncomfortable for you.
And so, like I said, it can bring a sense of calm, but there is also a possibility that can dive you deeper into the emotions. Right, so for mildly stressful situations, you can try it for yourself. But for deeper trauma, you definitely want to seek professional guidance. And Tim and I would love to work with you and process through some of these deeper traumas to really help you find that freedom. But you can practice these basic daily techniques to help manage smaller day-to-day triggers.
And even in her book, Getting Past Your Past, the author and creator of EMDR, Francine Shapiro, gives you some things that you can do just on your own. And so that would be a great resource for you as well, if you want to pick up the book and start going through that and reading through that. So as we wrap up, here's a quick action list for you.
First, you want to conduct an honest year-end reflection. You can journal or talk through highlights and low points of the past year, noting any unresolved feelings or recurring themes. Then you're going to identify those potential trauma hotspots and recognize the memories or triggers that consistently bring up negative emotions, anxiety, or sadness.
Three, you can practice daily mini-reflections. So even after the big year-end review, check in with yourself weekly or monthly for a continual awareness that will support healing trauma and foster that personal growth. And four, you want to consider EMDR. If you suspect deeper trauma is at play, explore EMDR therapy as an option.
Tim and I are both EMDR trained therapists, and we love working with people through EMDR and seeing people be able to heal from things that they really thought they were just going to have to live with for the rest of their life. So we can help guide you in processing these memories effectively.
So we hope this helps you to have an idea of how to move forward and starting off the new year good and working on really reclaiming your mental health and trying to be in a much healthier spot and not letting these triggers have a power over your life anymore. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. And remember, your mind is a powerful thing. Music. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. We hope that you enjoyed today's episode and found it helpful.
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If you are struggling with persistent mental health issues, chronic marital issues, or feeling hopeless or suicidal, you are not alone. Help is available. Please seek professional help or call the National Suicide Hotline at 988. Thank you again for joining us on Mr. and Mrs. Therapy. Remember, there's always hope and there's always help. Music.