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Why Does EMDR Feel So Intense?
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Hello friends! This episode features Cassandra and Garth, as they talk about why EMDR therapy can sometimes feel intense and what that intensity actually means during trauma processing. They walk through the science behind EMDR, why the brain activates multiple memories at once, and how stress levels and support systems can impact the EMDR experience. You can learn more about Cassandra and her practice at: seentherapy.org. Get a taste for the episode below. If you enjoy your listen give us a follow, share, or five star review. Have a good one!
“The same reason that EMDR sometimes feels intense is what makes EMDR so effective and what really helps us get to the root cause of things.”
Hello, hello, hello friends. Welcome to the podcast where we simplify everything about mental health. Just kidding. But here's what we are gonna do. We're gonna sit down together, a licensed mental health professional, that's me, and a regular old Joe, as my husband Garth would describe himself. We're gonna talk about the nitty-gritty of the MBR, some nervous system mapping, how couples can help each other heal, what's healthy parenting actually look like, maybe a little bit of good old banter mixed in. All with the goal of making mental health a little bit simpler for you. Which note, because my lawyer says that I have to. I'm a therapist, but not your therapist, unless I am. Even if I am, this is still just a podcast, okay? Now have a good listen. Hello everyone. Thank you for joining us. This is Cassandra, and I have Garth with me once again. We keep bringing him back.
SPEAKER_00We'll see when he says he's done.
SPEAKER_05Once again, for the very first time.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01We're on top of it today, guys, which means we're actually not really on top of it today at all. So we'll see what you get out of this episode. As per usual, we are sitting at our kitchen table. We have a baby down for a nap, a dog put away in our four-year-old's room. Our four-year-old is temporarily at preschool. She'll be back this afternoon, and our high schooler is at high school. So this is as quiet as our house ever gets.
SPEAKER_05Yep, it is.
SPEAKER_01It's amazing that we get episodes out. But we do. And I'm proud of us. We I know I said this just a few episodes ago, but we've been doing this every week since September.
SPEAKER_05And boy, I feel it.
SPEAKER_01It's age you, it's where the gray is coming in, huh?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, no.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so we are answering some common questions about EMDR. We've done this before. We're looping back to what are some common questions that I'm getting from clients? What are some common questions that we're seeing on Google? What are we hearing in the community? And one of them is why does EMDR feel so intense? So we're gonna talk about that. But the main point that I think is going to be seen throughout this episode is the same reason that EMDR sometimes feels intense, is what makes EMDR so effective and what really helps us get to the root cause uh of things with EMDR. So we will parse that out a little a little bit and talk about specific points, but that's the primary through thread here that we're gonna be going over today. All right, before we get rolling, Garth, take it away. Bantas.
SPEAKER_05What's your favorite month?
SPEAKER_01My favorite month of the year. That's a really good question. What is my favorite month? So it's funny, I don't know that I had a huge preference before becoming a parent.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01And the further we get into parenthood, the more I'm realizing that once the holidays are over, I'm like, fast forward me to pool weather right now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right now.
SPEAKER_05Pool weather.
SPEAKER_01Pool weather.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like, and don't get me wrong, I genuinely like I enjoy our kids so much. Like, so much. So I'm not like, let's get let's get to the summer and get these kids, you know, out of here. Uh I just really love like with our four-year-old, I've had so many adventures during the summertime at this point. And I look, you know, my phone will pop up random pictures from when she was like the summer she was two. We I think I fell in love with summer even more. We had a blast, like we ran around everywhere. You know, she's not a little baby anymore, but we ran around everywhere, we were in the pool all the time. It was just really great. So I would say June.
SPEAKER_05June.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Cool. June. It's warm enough to really be outside and be having a good time. It's not crazy hot. I think right now, June is my favorite month. That will eventually change.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I don't keep favorites.
SPEAKER_03True. Forever. True.
SPEAKER_01But right now it's June.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01What's yours? I don't know the answer to this, so I'm really curious.
SPEAKER_05I'm kind of a fall guy. I really like November.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_05November, maybe October. One of those two.
SPEAKER_01I knew fall would be your favorite season, but I didn't know what month.
SPEAKER_05Nice rainy fall day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's that's where it's at.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I like the colder weather too. And summer I really enjoy, but I do not do I sweat a lot. I'm always hot already. And it's not that I like can't get out in the heat or that I really detest it. It's just just not always as comfortable as like a good 50-degree day. Oh man.
SPEAKER_01Now you know what I think I know about you though, and I may be wrong. I don't know that I've heard you complain about the heat outside. You don't like being hot when you're indoors.
SPEAKER_05That is so true. Like if you're 100% true.
SPEAKER_01If you're outside like working, I don't know that I've ever heard you like if you're mowing or you just sweat and you just accept like we're sweating and this is but in our home, like in the winter, we'll all bundle up and we'll keep it at like 67, 60 eight, usually.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If we don't have like this last one, or we had a little babe, so we were more attentive to the temperature. Yeah. But usually it's kind of a competition. Like, how long can we go without keeping the turning the heat on?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That is not our family during the summer.
SPEAKER_05Nope.
SPEAKER_01You do not want it hot.
SPEAKER_05Can't do it.
SPEAKER_01So anyway, yeah. That is so funny.
SPEAKER_05I'd never even thought about that myself, really. I I have no qualms. It can be 105 degrees outside, full sun. I'll go mow the yard, no complaints.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But I want to come in and I want it to be 70 degrees inside. If it's 71, my body's like, no, thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I have a theory, but we can talk about that off mic. Off mic.
SPEAKER_05Interesting. Okay. Interesting.
SPEAKER_00Makes us sound so official.
SPEAKER_05You better write it down. I'm curious.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I don't need to write it down. It's buckle up dark. It's locked in there. Right. Oh man. Okay. So getting into why EMDR feels so intense.
SPEAKER_01If you have done EMDR either as a client or a therapist, you know that it hits a little bit different than typical talk therapy. A lot of my clients will describe, especially if we're doing several consecutive hours, so what we call an intensive, yeah, being pretty emotionally exhausted. You're sometimes in session having physical reactions. So people will start breathing heavier, breathing faster. I will have some clients that will even describe, you know, their legs tensing up, their shoulders tensing up. That obviously has an impact, those physical reactions on their body.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then how they're feeling when they're leaving. People will often describe in between sessions dreams being more vivid and just kind of feeling raw. So we can talk a little bit about the science behind that. But first I just want to acknowledge that that's normal and that the intensity is a sign of the process working. Right. Uh I do want to, and we've done this before in previous episodes on the podcast, but I do want to just acknowledge that this should not take you to a place outside of session where your distress is just crazy high and it really impacts your functioning. Right? Like you're going to be tired, you're going to oh, I'm at a loss for word outs words outside of just fatigued and fatigued and raw.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. It would be kind of like, you know, if I work out, if I lift weights, and I notice that when I get up from a therapy session and go to walk a client out that I'm sore, that's you know, I'm noticing as a result of lifting weights, this physical activity that I engaged in, there's some sort of result, some sort of consequence, yeah, right. That's ultimately going to benefit my body, but has short-term negative side effects. Yeah, short-term implications that I don't love. Right. That's one thing. If I work out so hard that I I'm not gonna get into the science behind it, but I end up in the ER with lactic acid buildup. Yeah, yeah. Right. Like that's a problem.
SPEAKER_05You did it wrong.
SPEAKER_01Right. So totally normal with EMDR to have that kind of general soreness. But if you're noticing that your daily functioning is really impacted, you need to be talking to your therapist about that. Uh so first thing that makes EMDR more intense is that EMDR doesn't just access one memory, it activates entire neural networks. So the AIP model, adaptive information processing model, it functions with the idea that trauma memories are within isolated networks. And when we access those networks, we don't just access one memory.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_01Bilateral stimulation helps the brain start connecting fragmented pieces within that network. And when processing starts, related memories, emotions, body sensations, and beliefs all come online simultaneously. Yeah. Right. So you maybe thought you were coming in to address one specific memory from childhood, and then all of a sudden you're dealing with five.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now that can be overwhelming, as you can imagine. Sure. Right.
SPEAKER_05Of course.
SPEAKER_01Especially if those memories weren't memories that were very front of mind, which frankly is often the case. I will often have clients that I'm working with that start to address one memory, another memory comes up, and they're like, I don't remember the last time I thought about that. I don't think I've thought about that in adulthood. Right. So that's one piece is these memories that people are addressing don't stand alone. So if you're already, we've talked about this before as well, but if you're already coming into EMDR and you're at a place in your life where you're just exhausted and you've got a lot going on, one thing that you could tell your clinician is, look, I want to work on this as a control target. I want to, I don't want to go all over the place to 30 different memories.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01I don't want to take an a developmental approach. I want to take an acute approach.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_01So again, we've discussed this before, but that would be one thing that you could do to kind of decrease the overwhelm of all of these other memories popping up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, is that still going to happen to some degree? Yeah. Right. But your clinician can decide just because we see that path that we could walk down, do we walk down that whole mile-long path? Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So to use your weightlifting analogy again, it's like targeting a specific muscle group, you know, in a in a processed way. Okay. Versus total body workouts where you may wake up and everything hurts. Yes. But it's like, no, I did my legs yesterday. Yes. So legs hurt. And we're gonna a couple of days later, we're gonna do another muscle group.
SPEAKER_01Can we keep running down that for a second? It would be like, I love that you brought the weightlifting back up. If the clinician is the trainer, the personal trainer, and I'm supposed it's a leg day.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And I'm just wondering, and this would actually happen in my real life, this would be something that I would do. So it's a leg day, but I'm wondering, and I go pick up dumbbells and I start doing reps with them of some sort. It would be like the clinician comes over and gently says, Hey, Cassandra, remember it's leg day. I know that you already did one rep of those, but we're gonna sit those down for now. You don't need to remember that you need to do those. I'm gonna hold on to that.
SPEAKER_03We're gonna get to that.
SPEAKER_01We're gonna get to that. I'm gonna hold on to that for you, and we'll come back to it. Do you trust me to hold that for you? Yes. Okay, let's come back to leg day. I love that you brought us back there because that's perfect, right? Because that's that's a contained approach in EMDR. It's like the client may go there. The personal trainer is not gonna tackle me to keep me from going and picking up the dumbbells, right? Right. But I go and I pick up the dumbbells and I do a rep, and then they come over and they say, Cassandra. Yeah, Cassandra, we're gonna sit those down.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm gonna take care of that for you. I'm gonna remember that we need to come back to those. We're gonna go back to late day. That's perfect. Okay. Why it feels differently than talk therapy. Talk therapy often works at the thinking level, the front of our brain. EMDR accesses subcortical, so back of brain structures, amygdala, hippocampus, brainstem. You're processing at the body and emotional level, not just cognitive. So I say back of brain, back of brain, deep brain, right? So like amygdala and hippocampus is actually structurally more like middle brain, but it's like deeply embedded in our brain. So he mdr accesses those areas of our brain. You're processing at the body and emotional level. It is not just staying in your frontal lobe. There's less verbal filtering, more direct emotional experience. And, you know, weeks of traditional therapy is potentially happening over several minutes. And so again, you're you're sprinting, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you're sprinting, and then the clinician's asking you to pause and rest, right? But you're still sprinting, right? Like it's it's a lot.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh anyone who's ever done running training, I think, would tell you like 400s are rough because they are the longest sprint, unless you're like an elite athlete, and then maybe an 800 is a maybe you can sprint an 800. But 400s you which for those of you that 400 meter sprints.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, 400 meters, which is one lap around kind of a traditional track that you might see, you know, around a football field or at a high school or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. If you've ever done 400 meter sprint exercises, that's what you're doing in EMDR therapy. We're doing a lot of physical comparison today, but um you're not jogging. Yeah, you're not jogging. You are sprinting and you're doing a long sprint and you're sprinting hard, and then you're taking a break, then you're sprinting again, right? Like it's it's a lot. The neurobiological load is another reason that you're leaving, feeling fatigued, your nervous system is doing really heavy lifting, it's reprocessing, reconsolidating, it's integrating. Your brain is literally rewrite rewiring neural pathways in real time. So for cognitive behavioral therapy, for instance, we rewire neural pathways through behavioral change and like a lot of behavioral change. So it works, but it works through behavioral change that's happening outside of session.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's like jogging a two-mile, right? And so, same thing, we're rewiring neural pathways. We can do that with CBT, but a lot of that behavioral work is happening outside of session. Whereas in EMDR, it's not that work's not happening outside of session, it is, and I talk to clients about that, but we're re-like they will leave with neural pathways, you know, um, that are being changed, and that's a lot of work. That takes a lot of resources from your body.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And probably contributes to the feeling of it being intense, right? Your brain's thinking is literally shifting, and that's gotta be taxing, you know.
SPEAKER_01And not even your brain, your brain's because I think thinking implies consciousness. Like your your brain's signaling system is changing. And also like your parasympathetic and your sympathetic nervous system is recalibrating what actually registers as a threat.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, is changing.
SPEAKER_01That's changing. That that's very taxing on your system. Multiple emotions can surface simultaneously. Grief you couldn't feel at seven, and anger you had to suppress at 15 is suddenly there. That's an another piece, right? Is when people describe like sometimes EMDR puts them in a spot where they're having bigger feelings and more distressing feelings than they did before they started EMDR. That's a big piece of it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You walk through a memory of a loss that you had at seven years old, and you couldn't effectively process the emotions for whatever reason, didn't probably didn't have the caregiver support that you needed to to effectively process the emotions that you felt at seven, but now you've found enough safety as an adult that you can work through those emotions.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Ugh. Right. Um, so even outside of EMDR, right? Grief, grief sits outside of trauma to some degree, right? So we desensitize we desensitize a trauma event, but then you're still left with the loss. Yeah. And so when we've brought up that trauma event, we again we desensitized it, but then how do you now, now that you've acknowledged this for the first time in years, decades, what have you, how do you then walk through the grief process of it? That's exhausting. Right. Right. Like that's that's another piece.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So it's a lot of work that your brain is putting in. It's is one answer if we want to be brief as to why it's so intense. It's because it your brain is doing some hard work in there.
SPEAKER_01It's doing some hard work and it doesn't end when the session ends.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I I try to be clear on that with clients consistently. Like once we push this ball down the hill, it is a it is a rolling stone down the hill. Like it is going to keep going, and we can work to contain things.
SPEAKER_05And slow it down and keep it under control, but it's but it's moving. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay. So we've already talked a little bit about what you can do to make this a manageable experience for you, right? Uh so you're starting Endr, EMDR, you want this to be a manageable experience. You don't want it to get away from you. One of the things that we talked about is explaining to your therapist, this is where I'm at in life right now. I would really like to take a contained, acute approach to this particular thing that I want to work on.
SPEAKER_05And so, can I just ask a counterpoint question here?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_05It I don't think there's anyone out there who's like, yes, let's get out of control. And so are you recommending that all people would suggest that should should ask their therapist for this acute approach? Or you I guess what are the pros and cons of the acute approach?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So, no, I don't want everybody to be asking their therapist to take an acute or contained approach. That said, I think it depends on where you're at in life and what's going on outside of life. What are your two S's, stressors and supports? Are your stressors low and your supports high? If your stressors are high and your supports are low, you probably need to take a more contained acute approach. If your stressors are low and your supports are high, Go in with that developmental approach, man. I like I want and part of that is just my preference. Like I want to do developmental all day, every day, right? I'm like, let's get into the nitty-a-gritty of this.
SPEAKER_05And but I guess the why would you choose one over the other? I know with the the two S's you just mentioned, but what's the what's the drawback of the acute approach? It sounds like the drawback of the developmental approach is that maybe it's a little heavier. Maybe you're you're gonna be processing more things at once.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I use the garden visual a lot in different ways. And I feel like sometimes it gets confusing because I use it in different ways. But if we're gardening and we know that there's weeds in our garden, but the weeds that are the worst that get the biggest that pull the most nutrients from our plants are the thistles.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And there's two thistles in our garden. Do we have the energy to go out and completely weed our garden and pull everything out so that as much, as many resources, sunlight, water, soil nutrients can go to what we've planted as possible. Yeah. Or do we only have the resources to pull out the thistles? If we only have the resources to pull out the thistles, we should take an acute approach. If we are low stress, high support, we should weed the whole garden. Why not?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01If I'm in a place in my life where I have the time, money, support, emotional energy to weed the whole garden, why would we not weed the whole garden?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And yet, if I'm not in that place, there is still a lot of value in getting the thistles out of the garden. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_01Is that fair?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, with the goal of when you have more energy going back for those other weeds.
SPEAKER_01Then you then you do.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There there should never be this idea that like I have to go to EMDR and get everything done right now. That's not it's not the right timing for everybody to in to do that. We can't possibly find everyone at that place in their lives, and that is okay.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01And there's still value in doing some work. So you had asked why wouldn't everyone take an acute pro approach? And you didn't use this language, but I will. We don't ever want EMDR to be a runaway freight train, and you're absolutely right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When EMDR becomes a runaway freight train is when people are walking into EMDR, high stress, low support, and they're taking a developmental approach and ignoring that they're high stress, low support.
SPEAKER_03Gotcha.
SPEAKER_01The client and the therapist can't ignore that a person is in a high stress, low support situation.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And just plunge forward.
SPEAKER_05Just barrel bulldoze through everything. It's gonna get messy. Yeah. And that's okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. So I want to make sure that I get to a place of wrapping us up. So I'm trying to decide how to best do that. Okay. So what we just sorry, we got long-winded there. And I like where we went, but we got long-winded. Okay. We talked about what to do to make this a more bearable experience. And the first is to ask your therapist to take an acute, controlled, uh, or contained approach rather than a developmental approach.
SPEAKER_05Some some b-roll footage while Cassandra references her notes for this episode, everyone. Just give us a moment while we collect our thoughts.
SPEAKER_00We really should have some like interlude music. There you go. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I think I can wrap this up. Without my notes, I totally lost my place in my notes, but that's okay. Here's the thing when you start to notice intensity in EMDR, as long as you are high support, low stress, we just need to kind of reframe it as this is not a problem. It is a feature of EMDR.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It is an indication of growth. Yep. Right. Ride the wave. When I'm sore after a tough workout, it is an indication of growth. Now, if I can't get off my couch, if I've had lactic acid buildup and I need to head to the ER, at some point what we're doing is counter to our growth, right? But whenever I get up out of a chair and I'm sore, this is indicative of growth, right? So we we need to remember that. We need to remember that if we are low support, high stress, that we need to express that to our therapist, that we need to figure out ways to counter that. How do I start to develop some supports outside of EMDR? How does the therapist start to use a whole lot of resourcing before they go into other stages of EMDR? And then how do I decrease stressors outside of trauma work as much as I can? At some point, trauma is probably creating a lot of these stressors, and we just need to dive into that work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But also there are practical things that can be done to decrease those stressors beforehand. Reminder that if it feels too intense, tell your therapist you can always step back. Yeah. And stepping back, you know, if you go in and you're like, I want to do a developmental approach, I want to weed the whole garden. It is okay to step back and say, I'm focusing on these two thistles, the the heaviest hitters, and that's what I'm gonna do. The intensity is temporary, healing is lasting.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think another thing that wasn't in my notes, but that I'd like to call back to is an episode that we did on how to support your loved one through EMDR.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is a good kind of check for yourself too regarding supports. If you don't know who to sit down and listen to that with, uh-huh, you should probably work on identifying that person before you get rolling with EMDR. And then you should sit down and listen to it with them.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because even knowing that you have someone that you can get out of a session and you can text, like, here's how that went, yeah, is huge.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Just a little pressure release person, a little to use a cooking analogy. We love analogies. So yeah, the little Instapot pressure release button. Just let a little bit out.
SPEAKER_01Yep. Yeah. Yep. Okay. What am I missing to to wrap us up here at the end?
SPEAKER_05My th I I feel pretty, pretty wrapped up.
SPEAKER_01You feel pretty wrapped up.
SPEAKER_05Yep. I feel like a to-go burrito, just wrapped up.
SPEAKER_01So I'm looking at our time. We are right at 30 minutes again. Guys, we're not short-winded people.
SPEAKER_03Someday.
SPEAKER_01Okay, this was why EMDR feels so intense. Thank you for the listen. We hope you got some nuggets and learned something. As always, go to our website, scentherapy.org. Any of the buttons that are asking you to push them are going to prompt you to schedule a consultation call with myself, Cassandra. I would love to talk to you, even if you don't schedule with myself or someone in my practice. Always happy to help you find someone in our community that can work well with you. And then soon we will be putting more and more out under the umbrella Simply Mental and some exciting programming and things we have coming up there. All right. Thanks for the listen. Bye bye. Well, that's all, folks. Please see our show notes for ways to connect with us or go give us a follow on Instagram. You can find us at Simply Mental. If this episode resonated with you, send it over to a friend. Give us a five star rating, subscribe, download all the things the cool kids are doing these days. Thanks for having me listen.