17. EMDR for CPTSD and PTSD - What is EMDR, What to Expect, How to Heal from PTSD and CPTSD, My Personal Experience with EMDR - Emotional Detachment as a Tactical Advantage for Family Court, Season 2

This episode / blog post is a non-professional, blunt, simple description of EMDR, of traumatic memories vs. bad memories, of what you can expect when undergoing EMDR treatment. Most survivors of narcissistic abuse leave abusive relationships with PTSD / CPTSD, and that has to be handled in order to be able to detach emotionally from the intensity of the dysfunction if you're coparenting with a narcissist. EMDR is one of the therapies that exist to treat PTSD and CPTSD. There are other options.

This is the Transcript for Episode 17.

Welcome back to Light in the Battle, Season 2, Emotional Detachment as a Tactical Advantage for Family Court. Light in the Battle is a podcast for autistic women healing from narcissistic abuse, and it is a podcast where we get clearer, calmer, and spiritually and legally harder to mess with.

What I learned in my journey is that the legal advice and strategy for family court against people who make us feel confused or scared just doesn't land, if emotions are running high.

"The legal advice and strategy for family court

just don't land

if emotions are running high."

Survivors keep losing in court over and over. Then I figured it out. The safe parent has to show that they are the stable, child-focused parent, both in all the evidence that they generate, emails, texts, medical reports, and in their demeanor in court.

As long as narcissistic abuse survivors show up in court frazzled, with raging PTSD and resentment, and as long as they keep writing angry emails or share how mad they feel that contact has been allowed, or refuse to cooperate on certain aspects, they're never going to win. Although their concerns and feelings are mostly valid, and they don't change after we achieve emotional detachment, survivors need to stop creating content for the other side to use to make them appear unstable and unsafe for the child. So I'm taking you on the journey that I traveled throughout this Season 2, to get to a point where I detached completely. I cared just as much about my child's well-being. However, I got my head out of my butt and I worked on myself so I could get to a new and improved version. A version of myself that could play by the court's rules, to show the truth and the patterns of behavior in an indisputable manner.

Structure of Season 2:

• So far in Season 2 we've covered how to understand and break the trauma bond in episode 15A to episode 16B.

• Here we're going to be covering PTSD, CPTSD, and my thoughts about EMDR.

• Later on I'll also be talking about forgiveness, not reconciliation

• Codependency, the link between codependency and autism, and codependency recovery

• Fellowship and mentorship,

• Gratitude,

• And possibly surrender and grief.

  
  

So make sure to follow the show if you want to catch all the episodes as they drop. This Season is really a collection of all the items that I worked through in my recovery journey to get to a point where I could really go to battle because that's what it is. And also make sure to work with a professional, a trained therapist if anything I say here resonates with you.

EMDR is a type of trauma therapy

It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. What I've learned about it through my own independent research is that it's been used initially on war vets and various cases of people with PTSD and that nobody's really able to explain how it works in the brain. All they know is that it works.

What it looks like is, it's a sensory stimulation where they'll either make your eyes look left, right, left, right, left, right, or use another sense to stimulate left, right, left, right. And what it does is it moves a memory from the traumatic memory folder over to the bad memory folder.

EMDR moves a memory

from the "traumatic memory" folder,

to the "bad memory" folder

The difference between the two is that a bad memory is something you can talk about without any dysregulation. A traumatic memory is something that either you can't talk about - or if you do talk about it you will trigger one of the four trauma responses. You'll either go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

The way I look at it because I've got a very vivid imagination is that I've got Shrek, the green ogre, jumping into the driver's seat whenever I'm trying to deal with a traumatic memory. So I'll be going about my day, then something's going to trigger the trauma and Shrek will get into the driver's seat and start reacting for me. So I'll either be unable to finish my sentence or my voice will get louder, I'll get agitated, or I'll start being super nice and super funny. You know how trauma survivors are the most hilarious people? That's a fawning response that can be triggered by a traumatic memory.

And so you want all of that to move into the bad memory folder so you can talk about it. Basically you don't want to be Shrek. Don't be Shrek. Don't be triggered so easily that you fall into one of those four trauma responses. You want to get to a point where you can talk about things.

In my case when I tried to handle the traumatic memories via whatever it's called, the type of therapy where you talk with the therapist about what happened and what was done to you, and you try to work through that through talking... All it's done for me was re-traumatize me. So I'm not a doctor, I'm not a scientist, I'm none of that and I invite you to take everything I say as a story of lived experience. But I'm not the only person who has felt that talk therapy has only re-traumatized me.

Another problem with talk therapy versus EMDR is that if you're a survivor of narcissistic abuse, you're very likely also a survivor of financial abuse. And so you're just not going to have the budget for the many, many, many, many, many, many, many sessions that it takes to do the talking therapy. That type of therapy has been incredibly helpful for me in my journey, in other circumstances and to achieve other goals. So to look into how my childhood has influenced who have I've become, or to look into why certain experiences have maybe influenced my relationship with men, etc. Very useful for those areas of exploration, but not for trauma. All you're doing in talk therapy when bringing up the trauma, is you're making Shrek stronger. Because every time you try to talk about it, he jumps in, does his thing, takes over and messes up the entire session for you. It's nothing but a workout for him. He gets stronger. You don't want to be doing that.

EMDR is a short term, very impactful type of trauma therapy.

In my case, it took anywhere between two and eight sessions per traumatic memory that I wanted to clean out of my nervous system.

• Two sessions was for something that had happened maybe a month before, inside a store in my neighborhood. Someone almost punched me, and I did have the trauma symptoms after that happened. So I was avoiding that store. I would never go back there. I wouldn't come out of my apartment at nighttime. When I did go out, I'd be carrying glitter spray. I would keep ruminating over what had happened. I would get really jumpy. So I had all the trauma symptoms, and yet it was very easy to get rid of because it was so recent and that one only took two sessions.

  
  

• But for traumatic memories that dated back to childhood, that have grown deep roots into my nervous system and have pretty much shaped who I've become, those much older traumatic memories took eight sessions to clean out of my nervous system.

  
  
  
  

At this point, I'd like to ask you to please share this article so that more women like you and me can have access to this content. I absolutely believe in EMDR and I want more people to hear about it. I can create the content over here and you over there need to please push this content upwards in the Search Engines. Thank you so much.

If I were to talk to past me from a few years ago - and that would be the woman that I'm talking to right now, because the goal of this podcast is to give you the shortcuts - if you're in the thick of PTSD, CPTSD, narcissistic abuse recovery, parenting with ASD, parenting an ASD child, then the person I'm talking to, that would be me a few years ago when none of these resources were available.

If I were to talk to past me, hint, hint, I'm talking to you, I would get that woman to go to EMDR the minute I left their relationship, that relationship that felt so intimidating, so manipulative, so violent and that left me with PTSD. Instead, I went on to live with PTSD for a few years with a newborn and that was not the optimal combination. My kid would have needed me to not be so jumpy, not be so startled, not ruminate so much over what was done to me, feeling so distant from most situations, all the while being on guard all the time. That was not ideal for the development of the nervous system of a newborn while I was dealing with all of that.

What I'll be talking about in Episode 18 is how helpful it's been to go through EMDR to perform much better in court, to navigate a high conflict co-parenting relationship much better, to advocate for my child in school, etc. I will tell the world what EMDR has done for me until the day I die.

If you're a single parent, you cannot be spending all that energy on all your trauma symptoms

When you're sleep deprived, traumatized, and autistic, everything's exhausting to begin with. You need to allocate all of that energy into the day-to-day, not into your trauma symptoms.

Quick heads up about my experience with EMDR

1. Because trauma lives in the body, it lives in the nervous system, it doesn't live up in the ether in your thoughts, it's very a physical experience. And so when you release that, you might have somatic experiences. In my case, I had a very strong tummy ache, something that had never happened to me before. I was suddenly struck with this huge pain. It was so bad that I fell to the floor and I texted my neighbor (I had an emergency plan in place with her) and I told her, "okay, baby's safe, I fed him at that time, diaper was changed at that time. I'm about to pass out. If you don't hear from me in the next half hour, please come in and take over." That's how bad the pain was because there was this release in my body from doing the EMDR.

   
   

2. And also you'll feel completely spent after an EMDR session. So it's not something you want to schedule the morning of job interview, the morning of a court hearing, the morning of an appointment with the school principal where you have to advocate for your child. You probably want to schedule those appointments strategically, knowing that you'll pretty much be useless for the rest of the day after your EMDR session.

   
   

Please remember to leave a like if this lived-experience article about trauma recovery and nervous system healing, is helpful.

In the next transcript, for Episode 18, we will talk about the numerous things that EMDR has changed in my life, how it has completely changed my performance in family court, why it's crucial to handle your trauma, to be better equipped to parent with ASD and to co-parent when you're observing narcissistic patterns of behavior. Until that next episode, your only job is to take it one day at a time. You make it until this evening and then you do that again tomorrow. We will see you next week.

If this is helpful, and you're still waiting to start trauma therapy, consider this piece: 10. Trauma Triggers in Everyday Moments - When Your Body Remembers Before You Do

Please always keep in mind that I'm not a professional. If this resonates with you, bring it to the attention of a trained professional before making any decisions. EMDR is not for everyone, another approach may work better for you.