I pulled this image from a site about PTSD. The brain pattern is the same whether from war of a national battle, of the battle of a familial war. We’ll cover how memories get blocked and pain is relived, despite our efforts to avoid the trauma.
But before all that, I think it’s really important to justify the validity of EMDR...to my loved ones...to myself...to the part of me that self-doubts and shuts up and shuts down when intimidated by wolves...to the people who doubt and deny our shared sexual trauma to protect their worldview.
Allowing people to live in denial is usually loving, especially when they’re facing an existential crisis, like pending death or a cancer diagnosis or some other earth-shattering shift in perception. It’s rude to watch someone’s life crumble into pieces just because you felt like talking too much. It’s rude to destroy people’s lives with the truth they refuse to acknowledge. It’s rude to force people out of illusions. It’s rude to turn on the blinding, fluorescent ceiling lamps when someone’s trying to sleep in.
I’m a rude person, but I’m not a mean person. It’s mean to placate a secret that could harm young children. And since my father has a genius-like ay of manipulating social perceptions, I have to actively remind myself that I’m a smart woman, not a naive child who needs to be corrected with mansplaining and discrediting rumors. Writing this chapter is a self-affirming action; it’s Me giving Myself a hug and whispering, “Hey girlfriend, we got this. Guess what? You’re not a dumb bitch afterall.”
What was EMDR like? Oh, what a great opener, so kind of you to ask. Well, I sat in Karen’s special chair, sometimes watching a mobile light beam, always feeling bilateral pulsations in my palms. Bilateral brain stimulation is important because – when it comes to PTSD, no matter how minuscule the trauma – there’s a disconnect in the brain. An amnesiac problem, really…
Lesson One: Black Out Periods and the Double-Brain Problem.
When a child or teen’s natural development is interrupted by overwhelming pain, the “reptilian” part of the noggin (that basal ganglia limbic system thingy) doesn’t properly communicate with the “really-smart-human” area (the prefrontal cortex). If you’re a total nerd like me, you can learn about polyvagal theory by clicking here…or watching this famous guys’ three minute video.
Essentially, there’s a mental block, a disfluent absence of communication; two parts of our brains fight with eachother, compete for attention. They wrestle for dominance instead of joining forces and becoming friends. This lack of integrated oneness leads to impulse control problems, compulsive habbits, and disassociate day dreaming. It can also look sort of like ADHD...and mood disorders...and self-sabotage...and sex or food or work addiction. You might say we have two brains trapped in one skull. One of these brains says “fight, flight, freeze, drink booze, get sexy, kill enemies, numb out, escape, start over, oh shit.” The other says, “hey there, let’s be civil and balanced and moderate and achieve our principle-based goals one step at a time.”
If you’re an addict…or a trauma survivor…or a self-loathing depressed person…or a hypochondriac with fibromyalgia…or grew up in a family that looks perfect on the outside but feels “off” on inside, you’re usually stuck watching yourself do shit you don’t want to do all the time. The reptilian brain takes action, and the prefrontal cortex is like, “WTF Dude?! How did I end up here? Why do I feel so miserable and not normal. Not-satisfied.”
Or you might turn into one of those compliant, guilt-ridden humans who behaves properly, but continues to feel flooded with negative emotions that toxify your spirit. These waves will come at unexpected times, and demand to be numbed with temporary escapes using electronics, working out three times per day, or thoughts of wishing you could skip the living part of life and jump straight to heaven”
And whether we’re rebellious saints or saintly rebels, we end up hating ourselves for our powerlessness to fix this neurological argument...the tense of being torn into two people in one body...because we don’t know it’s biological…and we think we’re losers when we see magazines with beautifully artificial people on the cover…but we keep our problem a secret…because who the fuck wants to advertise being privately miserable?
So, to summarize: We have two brains in one skull that don’t get along. We can’t remember most of our childhoods.
Moving along…
Prior to age 3 ½, all of our memories are stored in the amygdala. But they aren’t really “memories” in the way we typically define them. They aren’t mental movie reels of home videos. In the amygdala, experiences can’t be preserved as contextual images or auditory records because the brain hasn’t yet developed language. And since these memories are preverbal, they’re preserved as…mmm…I’m going to use the word “feelings,” although it might not be totally accurate. It would be better to say: body sensations. The awareness of our abuse is “stuck” in the body. It’s an inner-knowingness.
These intuitive body memories are safeguarded in somatic storage. Naturally, the quality of your amygdalian memories will depend on how heavenly or hellish your infantile years were. And yes, you can remember the pain or the pleasure, whichever the case may be. #amygdalianisnotarealword. #imakeshitupandownit.
After age 3 ½, our memories are piled high in the hippocampus (not to be confused with hippopotamus…which spell check seems to prefer). This is the cognitive collection bank of mental movies...film noir, usually. Full color. Because the brain is rad. Although we store them here after learning language, they can still be “blocked.” Locked up with deadbolts. My husband, for example, remembers virtually nothing from his pre-college years. He just “came to” once it was safe to experience his own life. His whole childhood is a nap...and when he wakes up, he’s a player in Uni - a diplomatically rebellious frat boy with big dreams. Many of us can’t remember what our lives were like before we escape the dysfunction of our own homes. We’ll discuss that later...
By age 3 or 4, we’ve developed language…which is actually a superpower if you compare us to apes and monkeys. Despite speaking English, however, many people with painfully blocked-out pasts suffer from Alexithymia, which is a difficulty recognizing feelings and naming emotions And if you can’t name something, your brain has trouble making sense of it. While trying to find and label one’s reality, a brain maze of firewalls leads us astray...lost in the laundry basket of sad, abandoned socks. And we give up. Ignore the problem. Adapt. “Whe needs feelings, anyway?” we conclude.
So, to summarize again:
We have two brains in one skull that don’t get along.
We store bunch of somatic pain and/or pleasure in the amygdala before age 3. But if we have sex issues, it’s usually pain; fear, arousal, and generalized pain. To access and release “memories” trapped in the amygdala, we use creative and somatic therapies - art, music, poetry, or EMDR. “Body work,” like yoga, massage, and acupuncture can also stimulate this area of the brain so it can release old pain.
We store a bunch of full-color movies in the hippocampus after age 4. But only the non-threatening ones are easily accessible. To find the dirty bits, we need help via 12-Step or therapy.
If you’re like me – if you have preverbal trauma, whether it’s unintentional neglect or sexual abuse or feeling chronically cold and wet and hungry – you might be really, really bad at knowing what you feel…or why you’re feeling. Why you’re feeling anything at all. You might wish you were a monk or a robot or a transcendent spirit who feels no pain. You might feel like a failure for getting interrupted by too much empathy or lack thereof. You may discover thousands of micro daily irritants, because you assume you should be comfortably numb all the time…or euphorically happy…which, to people like us, can often feel like the same thing.
Lesson Two: More On Alexithyymia; Humble Yo Damn Self.
If you think you might have “an addictive personality”…if you feel “restless, irritable, and discontented”...then read closely, because we’re are a special breed of human: We don’t know how we’re feeling…ever.
We think we do…we think we know how we feel about things…which is not the same as having feelings in our bodies. And because we have obsessive thoughts, opinions, agendas, and mental commentary, we assume we know exactly how situations make us “feel.” But we don’t. We just think a lot. Our bodies and brains are attached by a tiny string. And we spend most of our energy running around on the hamster wheel in our heads.
Our “feelings” are usually just a bunch of bundled up heaviness in the gut…or a rush of anxiety between our ears…or a sore back…or a restless temperament…or OCD ticks…or a tightness in our throats…or a compulsive behavior...or mysterious guilt for being alive. When people ask us how we’re doing, we usually say, “shitty” or “alright” and rationalize our emotional discomfort with clever intellectual games…and delicious marijuana…and icecream…and obsessively checking-boxes…and porn. Sometimes the body - the emotional energy center of this beautiful life experience - makes us do things our brains tell us not to do if it’s not connected to the brain. The brain and the body need to be unified; they need to work as one organism. But when they don’t, we have affairs, or passively aggressively rebel at work...or steal heroin from some poor junkie who really needed it, you jerk. #realfriendsshare. #dontbeselfish. #getyourOWNfuckinheroin
Leaning to feel feelings and name emotions is something that should be taught in preschool. Since it’s not, it takes an intentional, nurturing, patient, non-judgmental caregiver who’s not in a hurry. And let’s be real: we live in a world of disempowering religious dogma, stress induced sickness, familial addiction, workaholism, and an obsession with fancy toys. It takes serious commitment to counteract the urge to “let the kid figure it out.” Which is exactly why I didn’t have kids…because I’m considerably lazy and selfish.
Personally, I think it’s a tragedy when the brain’s natural development of feeling recognition is disrupted. And this is why I spend my life working with addicts...like me.
So, to summarize again-again:
We have two brains in one skull that don’t get along.
We store bunch of somatic pain and/or pleasure in the amygdaloid before age 3.
We store a bunch of full-color emotional movies in the hippocampus after age 4.
If our parents aren’t perfect…or they’re sadists...like my dad…we’re prone to emotional recognition and regulation problems, along with compulsive habits around food, sex, money, body manipulation, or mind-altering substances.
In my case, for example, I could easily rattle off heinous facts about my past with absolutely zero emotion in connection with them. I also had inconvenient waves of negative depression with no memories of their origin. My brain wasn’t integrated - it was split into two. It’s as if my mind recorded historical data and empathetic sensation on two different cassette tapes, and filed them under different genres of music. I needed music mixing software…the kind DJ’s use to merge soundtracks. My brain was completely cut off from my body.
So, to summarize again-again-again:
We have two brains in one skull that don’t get along.
We store bunch of somatic pain and/or pleasure in the amygdaloid before age 3.
We store a bunch of full-color movies in the hippocampus after age 4.
Since our parents are inevitably set up to fail and doomed to fuck us up on accident, we have problems.
- We can educate ourselves about this shit to get better and feel less alone.
Lesson Three: Emotions for Dummies; A Cheat Sheet.
Pia Melody created a model outlining eight core human emotions:
Anger
Irritation, resentment, frustration
Felt all over body (power, energy)
Fear
Apprehension, overwhelmed, threatened
Felt in stomach, upper chest (suffocation)
Pain
Hurt, pity, sad, lonely
Felt in lower chest, heart (hurting)
Joy
Happy, elated, hopeful
Felt all over body (lightness)
Passion
Enthusiasm, desire, zest
Felt all over body (energized, recharged, spontaneous)
Love
Affection, tenderness, compassion, warmth
Felt in heart, chest (expansion, warmth)
Shame
Embarrassed, humble, dirty
Felt in face, neck, upper chest (warm, hot, red)
Guilt
Regretful, contrite, remorseful
Felt in gut, core (gnawing sensation)
Lesson Four: Habbitual Disassociating & Unconscious Denial; Why We Live in the Matrix Instead of Planet Earth.
Ok, now that we’ve covered how memory works, it’s time to talk about our adorably disassociated personalities. If you’ve blocked out giant chunks of your past, your brain has secret computing compartments that control you without your permission. If I remember right, I think I talk about these little black trauma boxes later in the book…in a chapter I already wrote…before I ended up in this sex-rehab looney mansion…I’ll be bringing up airplanes…but right now I’m too lazy to check, so we’ll use a different analogy.
Those cassettes we mentioned have material on them that’s hard to listen to. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in storage. They’d be in your 1990 Chevy Lumina…because who doesn’t want to feel cool in a broken down mini-van? Since the cassette tapes of your brain and hiding in super-secure storage closets with alarm systems…ugly closets that look like dungeons…with nightmarish content inside….there are no keys to open them. They’ve been welded shut since before you can remember. And if there were keys, you swallowed ‘em when you were little. Don’t worry, I swallowed mine, too. #twinning.
Oh, wait! There’s more. #toothpastesmile.
If you stumble upon one of these cassette tapes on accident…if you “get triggered” by someone or something that disrupts your peace of mind and sends you into a tailspin of eradicating thoughts, a giant sign will light up with neon orange font that reads: DO NOT OPEN EVER…EVER…FOR REAL, LIKE NEVER. GO AWAY DUDE. IT’S TOO MUCH. I’M SERIOUS; THE AWARENESS IS DEADLY. IF YOU TRY TO OPEN ME, I’M CALLING THE COPS, BRO. OK, NOT REALLY, BUT YOU GET MY DRIFT. JUST STOP. GO EAT 10 BOWLS OF CEREAL INSTEAD. THEN YOU’LL FORGET YOU EVER DISCOVERED THIS CLOSET IN THE FIRST PLACE.” Mmmm… Frosted Flakes... #youaintgotnothinontony.
Lesson Five: Accomodating Trauma vs. Healing
It’s my understanding (and I could be wrong) that unless you have access to somatic therapies and EMDR, you will probably have to work around your trauma with cognitive behavioral therapies (12-Steps or peer recovery groups included) and DBT. That’s what I did for over a decade.
I tried to use education, meditation, 12-Step work, and philosophical books to pry my childhood open. But the crow bar was never strong enough, or thick enough, or long enough to render lasting change or real memories that I could trust. The closet was jammed. Plus, I read lots of articles about the unreliability of memory, and was skeptical of my own intuition. The last thing I wanted to do was traumatize myself with my own fuckin’ imagination…or worse, accuse someone of doing something they’d never done. #imnotameanieremember?
Don’t get me wrong, 12-Step work and family-systems therapy and psychiatric help did save my life. I became not-bulimic and not-alcoholic and not-masochistic and not-codependent and not-jobless. These were no small feats. But post marriage, I developed other symptoms that were dragging me down:
- General sadness and loneliness.
- An inability to believe in myself.
- Agoraphobia and claustrophobia; getting easily overwhelmed.
- Obsessiveness about my dogs’ quality of life; fear they might be in pain or need to be rescued from loneliness.
- An inability to orgasm with my spouse.
- Transference issues (finding things wrong with things that are fine).
- Strange crushes on manipulative men I didn’t want to date.
- Nightmares and waking up sweaty...so sweaty that I’d have to change my clothes, change the sheets, and sleep in the other room.
My tough love approach was limited. The models I used left me wanting. Guessing. Wondering what might be unconsciously contributing to my dysfunctional inner-life despite a pretty house and more money than I’d ever dreamed. I had friends and wore normal sized clothes. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why am I so ungrateful? So stuck?
When it came to my “body-aching depression and sex problems” – which I now know to be symptoms of untreated PTSD – inventories and 5th Steps availed me little. Helping people kept me sober, but not vibrant. My life was getting a little grayer every year. I kept smiling, but my husband could feel my dwindling spirit. I felt bad. Poor guy, I thought, he marries a hot fitness instructing super-woman and gets stuck with a broken down, dried out, closed up vaginal canal.
Opposite my self-propelled healing tactics, EMDR was gentle.
Mmmm…gentleness….
It rusted those closet hinges slowly, eroding deadbolts into a piles of orange dust. And instead of swinging the doors wide open, instead of letting all the skeletons tumble out at once, EMDR cracked the edges of the closet…just a smidgen…just a sliver. Just enough to let my prefrontal cortex make sense of the devilish treasures seeping out. Once these treasures were sorted and categorized and processed and known, the door would open a little more to reveal more memories…more cassette tapes…more music.
If you’re an exceptionally lazy person, EMDR is a dream module. Here is the recipe I followed to remember myself:
Show up to Karen’s office with cash.
Talk on couch. Be charming.
Sit in “The Special Chair.”
Feel miserable for two days post session. Eat donuts on accident. Engage in useless self-loathing.
Record your miseries and enlightening insights on iPhone’s voice memo to replay for Karen so you get the most for your money.
Repeat until you are (a) passionately happy and secure, or (b) have flashbacks and a psychotic break..which will eventually lead to passionate happiness.