Good Neighbor Podcast: TN-WNC-SWVA

Ep# 284: Beyond the Panic: How EMDR Therapy Changes Lives With Jennifer Hasty

• Skip Mauney & Jennifer Hasty • Episode 284

Share episode

What makes Jennifer Hasty with Jennifer Hasty Therapy a good neighbor?

What happens when trauma keeps us trapped in cycles of panic, fear, and hypervigilance? Meet Jennifer Hasty, a licensed professional counselor who transformed her own debilitating experience with panic attacks and claustrophobia into a healing practice for others through EMDR therapy.

Jennifer's story pulls you in immediately—a single mother for 25 years who found herself unable to enter crowded spaces like Walmart without experiencing panic attacks. When workplace anxiety became overwhelming, an employee assistance program connected her with the therapy that would change everything. After just three EMDR sessions, Jennifer experienced a profound shift in how her brain processed a childhood trauma. Standing taller, smiling more, and seeing with "clear vision," she discovered her life's calling.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) uses bilateral stimulation—rhythmic movements similar to REM sleep—to help the brain reprocess traumatic memories. Jennifer explains how this fascinating technique moves memories from the emotional center of the brain to long-term storage, essentially "taking the memory off the emotional hook." Through buzzing tappers, alternating taps, or drumming, patients maintain groundedness in the present while addressing past trauma, often shifting from self-blame to compassion and gaining emotional distance from triggering experiences.

Beyond EMDR, Jennifer challenges pervasive myths around mental healthcare, emphasizing that our brains deserve the same attention as any other part of our body. "To believe your mind does not deserve healthcare is a huge misconception," she asserts. Her holistic approach extends beyond her practice into breadmaking (with health benefits for trauma-affected digestive systems), ballroom dancing, and community connection.

Ready to explore how trauma therapy might transform your relationship with difficult memories? Check out Jennifer's website at jhastytherapy.com and discover if EMDR might help you "be the hero that you needed as a kid."

To learn more about Jennifer Hasty Therapy go to:

https://jhastytherapy.com/

Jennifer Hasty Therapy

423-444-0299

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Skip Monty.

Speaker 2:

Well, hello everyone and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. So I am super excited to be live streaming today, as well as recording an episode of the Good Neighbor with a very special guest in our studio, and we're thrilled to have her and her little bird friends that we can hear in the background. I absolutely love that With us in the studio. I'm sure you'll be just as excited because today I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, Ms Jennifer Hastie, who is a trauma therapist. Jennifer, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 2:

Well, like I said, we're excited to learn all about you and what you do. So if you don't mind, why don't you kick us off and tell us about your practice?

Speaker 3:

Well, I am a licensed professional counselor in Johnson City. I am a EMDR trained therapist. Emdr is a trauma therapy that is extremely effective for many aspects of negative beliefs and traumas that occur in our lifetimes. I've been in practice since 2019. I've been a therapist, so I did this later in life.

Speaker 2:

Nice. So trauma release you ever heard of? Uh? I just did an interview with someone who focuses on or specializes in uh fascia, uh release therapy. Are you familiar with that? I found that was incredibly interesting, but I want to hear more about you. So how did you get into this, into the therapy business?

Speaker 3:

Long story short, and I have been a single mom probably over my lifetime, probably about 25 years or so. It's been a long time as a single parent, and when I was around 40, which was about 15 years ago I was having panic attacks at work. I was in such a state depression, anxiety, everything else and one day at work, after a panic attack, my boss said hey, I think you should go to EAP, which is an employee assisted program for people to get kind of short term therapy. And when I went and I told the therapist you know this thing happened to me when I was around 10. And I keep having flashbacks of this. Maybe this is why I am the way I am I was suffering from claustrophobia.

Speaker 3:

I couldn't go into Walmart on a Saturday, on a busy day, the first of the month, just forget it. I was going to have a panic attack if I got anywhere crowded. So it was kind of a claustrophobic way. And so, since we only had like three or three to five sessions at work, she said let's try EMDR, and I had never heard of this. And so she prepped me and over three sessions, that last session changed my life.

Speaker 3:

You know, I came out of there with clear vision. I was standing up taller, I was actually smiling, and my brain had reprocessed that memory, taking it from something in my emotion brain, the center of my brain, and put that memory into long term where it needed to be. So I was no, my emotions were no longer affected by the, by the memory, and so I left there going, oh, everybody's got to do EMDR, I have to learn how to do this. At the time I only had an associate's degree and was like, oh, I'll never be able to do that. You have to have a master's degree to do that, and that's just way far off, you know. So I kind of talked myself out of things. But it took, you know, literally probably a good 10 to 12 years for me to actually become a, have my master's degree and get trained in EMDR, and so now I'm helping people in the therapy that helped me.

Speaker 2:

Wow, great story. And MDR stands for what?

Speaker 3:

EMDR, sorry, stands for eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing. So yeah, Do you want me to continue?

Speaker 2:

EMDR yes, please.

Speaker 3:

EMDR. So eye movement EMDR kind of works with bilateral stimulation. So it's back and forth, just like you're in your dream and REM sleep. Your memory, your brain is kind of processing what happened during the day, your dreams, all the stuff in your REM state. So the theory is that through bilateral movement, bilateral stimulation either with hands in my office I use tappers that buzz back and forth so people can hold these tappers in their hands. You can also tap on your arms like this you can tap your legs, you can tap your feet, you can tap your feet.

Speaker 3:

Drumming is bilateral movement. Some say chewing gum, but I don't know about. To me that's just munching. That's not like bilateral. You can't really crunch one side and then the other, but you're just, and even listening to music can be bilateral stimulation. But in doing that you're kind of letting your body know hey, we're not in the memory right now, we're not there, we're not in the actual thing that happened, we are in the here and now. So buzzing back and forth kind of keeps your body in here while your other foot is in the memory.

Speaker 3:

There's all kinds of theories. One theory is that it's activating both sides of your brain to to do this. I find there's a number of theories about it in science. Maybe we really don't really know how it works, but it's just kind of, in essence it's taking. So I've moved it back and forth, reprocessing.

Speaker 3:

While you're moving back and forth, we're talking about the memory. You're kind of getting a new perspective over what that memory means. People may go into it with a belief of it was my fault and we want to change. It was my fault too. I was a kid. There was no way I was responsible for that. So while we're reprocessing, you start to kind of get a zoom out view of the memory. That's what happens for me when I'm doing EMDR. Is I end up, you know, right? It's right in your face at first and then throughout the memory. As you kind of reprocess it, it's like you're in a looking through a ring camera in the corner of your room up on the ceiling and you're kind of looking down at it.

Speaker 3:

So a lot of people describe this as it feels further away. The memory feels further away now, or or sometimes. It's just I'm not bothered by that anymore and it's the subtle kind of it's not this instant thing. You have to go out of the office and get triggered by the thing that was bugging you before, like, for me it would be going to Walmart and then I'm like, oh, I'm not having panic attacks anymore. I can single out sounds. Ptsd has a way. Post-traumatic stress disorder has a way of kind of clustering all the things and makes us very hypervigilant. So we're listening to all the sounds, we're looking out for danger. Our brain is just doing that to keep us safe, you know, and people like hate themselves and hate their brain. Why am I like this? And I think I'm jumping around a lot, so I apologize for that, that's okay.

Speaker 2:

I asked the question, yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So reprocessing it's just kind of taking the memory off of the emotional hook in your brain and putting it into long term so that it's not knocking on the limbic system or the amygdala in your brain that holds this fight, fight or freeze kind of thing, so that memory just keeps knocking, knocking, knocking. Danger, danger, danger. And when we do MDR we kind of take that hook off, you know, so you no longer longer have all these strong, strong emotions to these um, to these previously activating um, activating triggers or flashbacks, so we desensitize you to the memory as well.

Speaker 2:

Very fascinating EMDR.

Speaker 3:

It is fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Very fascinating EMDR. It is fascinating, yeah. So what are some myths?

Speaker 3:

or misconceptions in your industry, in your business.

Speaker 2:

Oh gosh so many, so many.

Speaker 3:

A lot of people say therapy doesn't work. You know it doesn't work. That's not a. You know we don't, I don't need therapy, you just need to learn how to tough it up. You know, but in essence, you know we don't, I don't need therapy, you just need to learn how to tough it up. You know, but in the, in essence, you know old school stuff. I remember a former mother-in-law, you know. Oh, she's going to a doctor for the head. You know it's like.

Speaker 3:

So you know your brain is the is the driver of your body and of your nervous system. Hormones get. You know, our glands kind of produce hormones based on our stress responses, based on joy, based on contentment and scared. Whether we're scared or fearful or angry, our body is so is such the supercomputer that it releases these hormones to help us and to keep us safe. You know.

Speaker 3:

So people think that your brain is not connected. You know, like you, you have panic attacks and you just need a hand. Like you just need to figure it out. You know when essence therapy just kind of helps you untangle all this stuff that makes you think about things in a different way. And hopefully, with thinking about things in a different way. Your body and your, you know your feelings. Your whole nervous system just learns how to relax and learns how to not take things personally, how to, how to step back from anger, how to put boundaries up, how to. You know all these things. So there's just so much, but you know to. To believe that your brain is not, your mind does not deserve healthcare is a big misconception, very, very huge. But our brains do deserve mental healthcare in whatever ways we can get it.

Speaker 2:

Amen, sister, I couldn't agree more, couldn't agree more. Well, you worked hard to get where you are now.

Speaker 3:

Outside of work today. What do you do for fun? Well, I am a jack-of-all-trades master of none. My little ADHD superpower allows me to dive fully deep into many things, crafting things. I also do expressive arts in my practice, so I'm very crafty and wanting to create and make and my mother used to go to things and say I can make that. So I've been doing so. Now I'm like now I'm making bread.

Speaker 3:

I'm making bread right now, but uh you know, trying out different sourdough things and, uh, made a beautiful loaf of bread this morning. I like ballroom dancing here in our community in Johnson City. I love going to Shakti in the mountains and learning about different ways of self-sustaining things and be around wonderful, beautiful people that are also working towards their growth.

Speaker 2:

Awesome Bread, love bread. To me it's fascinating. Sourdough starts with. There are some sourdoughs that are hundreds of years old. It's insane.

Speaker 3:

Wow, no, mine didn't my first one. I made a great one at first and then my second one, my starter. Something happened, so I'm starting over. I'm starting all over, but I love it that sourdough bread is good for our gut and our stomach and our body, and so I'm trying that out because you know our body can have all kinds of symptoms, to trauma tearing up our gut and our digestive system and our nervous system itself. So eating the right foods can help heal too.

Speaker 2:

So I'm all for that, absolutely, absolutely Well, if fascinating. If, jennifer, if you could think of one thing that you would like our listeners to remember about you and your practice, what would that be?

Speaker 3:

You know, therapy is something, and what my tagline is for my business is be the hero that you needed as a kid. You know therapy is a thing to help heal our inner child, to help heal ourselves, the little one still lives inside us, and sometimes that's the trigger itself.

Speaker 2:

So doing this. Yes, it can be scary, but it can also be so liberating.

Speaker 3:

Very freeing, yes.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely Very good thing to remember, awesome. Yes, absolutely very good thing to remember awesome. And for those of us who are intrigued and would like to learn more about how you might be able to help them or me, how can we learn more?

Speaker 3:

um well, my website is a little bit unconventional. I do swear quite a bit in my practice, so my website is jhastytherapycom. My schedule right now is full and I do have a wait list, so, whereas I don't need the business really, but I wanted to come on here and just kind of give people a general idea of what EMDR is. There are many EMDR therapists in our community and you know I just encourage people, whatever modality you want to do brain spotting there's so many different modalities for trauma therapy and to find someone in your community who does it. But you know you can reach me through my website and there's a contact form there and also my phone number. You know the contact form. I can give resources by email. I'm happy to kind of add you to my wait list if you would like. And then I also have an office mate who also is certified in EMDR and, you know, in trauma work.

Speaker 2:

Very good, awesome. Well, jennifer, I can't tell you how much, how fascinating it's been to learn about what you do and EMDR and how it benefits our community, and I appreciate that so much. Appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to spend some time with us and share your thoughts with our listeners, and wish you and your family and your practice all the best, moving forward.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much, Skip.

Speaker 2:

Appreciate it. Maybe we can have you back sometime and talk some more about EMDR. All right, thanks so much.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnptry-citiescom. That's gnptry-citiescom, or call 423-719-5873.