Is That Light in the Tunnel?

I relaxed into the couch in my therapist’s office. I didn’t know what to expect this time. We’d met a couple of times before to discuss my history and the patterns of my madwoman. Sue had agreed that everything she heard pointed directly to a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. Today we were doing our first EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing) session. I was nervous, but hopeful. What if I really was insane and it wasn’t PTSD?

I’d read everything I could find on EMDR on the internet. I understood the logic behind it. The concept is that in times of high stress we don’t have the chance to fall into REM sleep. REM is the time in sleep when we process our lives between our subconscious and our conscious selves. If that processing doesn’t occur, PTSD can be the result.

EMDR involves using a “light board,” an electronic device that tracks a series of lights back and forth, putting our eyes into the motion of REM. That motion triggers a waking REM state, allowing whatever is buried in our subconscious to rise and be processed by our conscious mind. No one is sure exactly how that subconscious-to-conscious processing works, but in hundreds of studies with veterans and other PSTD sufferers, it did work. Everyone’s experience was different. I was about to find out how I’d react.

Sue, my therapist, put the lightboard on my lap, asked me to focus on remembering the feelings during my last fight with my guy, and started the lights moving back and forth, back and forth. As my eyes traveled across the screen, following the light, the memory of our fight engulfed me: the sadness and feeling of abandonment, the terror at my own anger. I was dropping through the lights back into that same horrible moment. Once again the madwoman was in control of my emotions and my spirit. I began to cry, softly then stronger and stronger. It was like I was there again, live and in the flesh. I sunk deeper and deeper into my heartbreak, all over again.

But then the scene changed. A quick image flashed through my mind — a memory of me curled in a ball on the floor of my bedroom after I found out that the man I was in love with 10 years earlier was cheating with multiple women. The pain and anguish from that experience flooded into my reality. It was as if that betrayal was happening all over again.

I began to sob even harder, reliving the horrible moment I learned the truth. And then another image flashed through my mind. I was standing and watching yet another man walk out of his house with a strange woman on his arm. The man had been another love in my life that had gone so wrong. The rage and powerlessness and just plain broken heart engulfed me.

I began to rock back and forth, sobbing. My body was so tight I could barely breathe. I hugged myself tightly as I began to whisper “I can’t take it anymore,” over and over again. No more images came, only despair, powerlessness and complete and utter defeat. For the next 30 minutes I held myself, sobbing, and rocking, whispering, “I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t take it anymore,” as the blackness overwhelmed me.

My desolation wasn’t about anything in particular by now. I was simply engulfed in my own powerlessness. I couldn’t change the circumstances, couldn’t take away the pain of their betrayal. All I could do was sit, rock back and forth, sob and repeat that single phrase, a phrase that was already oh-so-meaningful.

I can’t take it anymore.

We ended the session by reinforcing a few positive statements that we defined before we started. They call it reprogramming. When we were done, Sue explained that the emotions washing over me were the subconscious remnants of the pain that I’d experienced during those times of betrayal. Those were the emotions I hadn’t processed, the emotions were still pent up in my subconscious, powering the madwoman. By always bucking up and being strong, I’d buried the reality of my emotional pain. Now it was releasing.

The session left me exhausted: emotionally, spiritually, physically. I could hardly wait to get home and go to sleep.

Yet as I left Sue’s office, I knew I’d found my path to healing. It had been exhausting but relatively painless. I was glad for that. This wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

Photo Credit

“Blizzard” Patrick Hoesley @ flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.

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