“One of the disturbing aspects of ‘PTSD’ is that it is not just the mind that is reacting to what happened to you – the body keeps on reacting, too. You don’t just feel the fear emotionally: your body also does things that seem beyond your control, freezing, switching off, speeding up, slowing down, becoming dizzy . . . . And it can do that without your having any memory to match it. You simply don’t know what is going on, and it can take a long time to realize that you are re-living something from the past.
Used by a sensitive therapist (like Morit), EMDR is a simple but effective technique that helps you to process what happened to you. It gently takes your mind into an emotional reaction and puts that together with giving your body a gentle left-right stimulus. The combination somehow enables the mind and the body to reconnect, to re-live what happened in a safe environment, and so to process what has hitherto been unbearable. And so what happened becomes a memory of something past rather than a present nightmare or a future terror.
The words ‘gentle’ and ‘safe’ are crucial here. One of the things I have most appreciated about Morit’s approach has been that she has taken things SLOWLY. Any time she sensed that I was afraid or reluctant, she stopped and we explored the fear. So the therapy, although grueling, was bearable, and I had a firm foundation on which to move on to the next step.”