Clarity

After Joan's accident this summer I have struggled to make peace with the memory of the events. For a couple months I would struggle not to replay it over and over in my head when I'd be laying in bed at night. I'd cry and cry and often have to get up and do something to distract me. That has faded, it is easier to distract myself, but I still, every time I think about it - I feel the stress response spread through my body. I feel sick to my stomach, my chest tightens and my heart beats faster and I just think to myself, "Hello Rachel you are not actually watching your daughter cut her finger off, calm down." So anyway, I've been wanting to do EMDR therapy ever since researching it after listening to some friends talk about how much it helped them process traumatic events in their life.

A short definition by Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a psychotherapy developed by Francine Shapiro that emphasizes disturbing memories as the cause of psychopathology^[1][2] and alleviates the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).^[3]

EMDR is used for individuals who have experienced severe trauma that remains unresolved.^[4] According to Shapiro, when a traumatic or distressing experience occurs, it may overwhelm normal cognitive and neurological coping mechanisms. The memory and associated stimuli are inadequately processed and stored in an isolated memory network.^[1]

The goal of EMDR therapy is to process these distressing memories, reducing their lingering effects and allowing clients to develop more adaptive coping mechanisms. This is done in an eight-phase approach that includes having clients recall distressing images while receiving one of several types of bilateral sensory input, including side to side eye movements.^[5] The use of EMDR was originally developed to treat adults suffering from PTSD; however, it is also used to treat other conditions and children.^[6]

So today, exactly seven months from the day of her accident I finally had a session with a therapist who specializes in EMDR and child therapy named Carol Kibbe.

She asked me to describe the experience very briefly and I just told her that I was sitting on the living room floor with a large metal paper cutter right in front of me that I was using to cut paper for an art project for the kids when Joan just out of nowhere sat down next to me, lifted the cutter and pushed down on it with her other hand and cut the top of her pinkie off. I told her if it had taken one second instead of half a second, that I could have stopped it. There was blood pouring everywhere and we rushed her straight to the hospital where we had to wait for an hour and a half for the pediatric hand surgeon to respond to the ER docs questions about how to treat it and in the end they just decided to stitch it back saying she'd have a 50/50 chance that it would reattach.

I bawled like a baby through most of the session but it was so so so good.

Carol: What was the worst part of the experience, what was the most traumatic part, if you had to just choose one image, what would it be?

Me: Watching her push the blade down on her fingers and not having time to just reach out and stop it.

Carol: What feeling comes to you the strongest when you think of that image?

Me: helplessness.

 Carol: And where do you feel that?

Me: In my chest.

Carol: Ok, so I want you to replay that image and that part of the experience in your mind and let yourself feel those feelings of helplessness while you hold these small cylinders. (that took turns vibrating and were the "bilateral sensory input" part).

We did that a couple times and she'd have me rate on a scale of 1-10 how distressing my feelings were.

And then we moved on and I told her another thing that I felt I needed to work through was that when I think of her accident or it comes up in conversation, I struggle with feelings of guilt or anger at myself. Of feeling like I should have prevented it. She asked me to label it more precisely and I said it was a feeling of not being enough, and that I felt it mostly in my stomach, like a sick feeling in my gut.

And then we did the same thing and then I told her another issue I still struggle with in the same, "I'm not enough" way is that when it happened I yelled "Oh God" over and over while carrying her around trying to find something to stop the bleeding and while Verity and Sophia followed me, and how every time the accident comes up Sophia tells people, "My mommy FREAKED ME OUT. She was yelling and yelling and I got freaked out!" And how I feel ashamed that I didn't stay more calm, that I traumatized Joan worse by not being calm and that I also was the reason it was a worse experience for Ver and Sophia. And then we did the same thing where I imagined it all and felt that feeling of not being enough, if I had been enough I would have been able to stop it from happening AND I would have handled it better during the initial crisis. And then she said we were going to do the same images but while finding one phrase to repeat to myself - a phrase of what I would have told a friend who was in my situation and was struggling with feelings of helplessness, guilt and not feeling competent or enough.

And I actually told her that instead of the friend idea, it helped me to think of what I would tell Joan about her part in the accident. At one point in the hospital when I was explaining to her that we had to unwrap her hand to get it X-rayed she sobbed to me, "I jus wish I hadn't messed wit it!" And I told Carol that THAT feeling I had when Joan was blaming herself was what I wanted to feel for myself. That feeling of wanting Joan to know that I understood how awful she felt but that she didn't need to blame herself, that accidents are just a part of life and that I loved all of her no matter what she did. That it was impossible for her to do something that she should ever beat herself up about, that just her being, just her existing was the reason she shouldn't regret any part of herself.

So then we did "I am enough" as what I told myself while replaying the hard images/experience but I told her that in my head I kept justifying to myself WHY I was enough. Like I was telling myself, "Well you're enough cause you pulled it together at the hospital and was calm for her." or "You're enough because you process the experience with her now in helpful ways when it comes up." And I told her I didn't like it. That I didn't tell Joan that she was "enough" because she was competent or acted in a certain way. I told her that I love the mantra, "Love shows up" and THAT'S what I wanted to tell myself. That I was enough for Joan because I showed up. Because I was there for her giving my everything no matter how poor my everything was, the quality of my mothering didn't matter. Wow this is harder to write than to say. But in the end, we spent most of the rest of the session with me bawling (and holding the vibrating cylinders) while going through the experience again through the eyes of a mother who was there for her daughter and that was all that mattered.

I went on a little walk afterwards and just felt so grateful and peaceful. Grateful for science and good people to help me find clarity about the hard things in life.