What Exactly Is an EMDR Intensive?

Do you ever feel as though you are reliving the same patterns, or having the same recurring negative thoughts or experiences? Many of us are operating out of subconscious negative beliefs that are creating distressing patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and limiting our ability to feel worthy and deserving of the life we desire.

EMDR is a powerful therapeutic modality that helps to release these beliefs from our subconscious and unconscious minds, and allows us to live in a less uncomfortable, anxious, and fearful state of being. Through EMDR therapy we can release these limiting beliefs so that we can feel more empowered, confident, and safe in our daily lives.

One way to confront these limiting beliefs and negative cognitions is to do intensive EMDR therapy. This is where session times are extended so we can do a deep dive into releasing these beliefs about ourselves. Since I began offering EMDR intensives, I have had a lot of inquiries about why choose an EMDR intensive model over more traditional, weekly, 50 minute sessions. So I thought I’d write a little about what an EMDR intensive even is, and how to know if it might be right for you. (If you are not familiar with EMDR as a therapeutic modality, you can read a previous blog I wrote on the topic HERE or learn more about it from the EMDRIA homepage HERE.) 

An EMDR intensive is indeed, just as the name implies, intense. They are longer EMDR sessions (usually 2.5-hours, 4-hours, or even longer) where you focus for an extended period of time on your desired area of inner work. EMDR is considered a maximum exposure therapy, where you are reprocessing a specific trauma, memory, feeling state, or experience in a way that you are fully present with any lingering and unprocessed distress of that particular experience.

The discomfort that remains is based on a subjective level of distress you still experience when thinking about the memory. This is based on somatic, mental, and emotional discomfort. Through the bilateral stimulation of the brain, (and through the lens of the adaptive information processing model) repeated exposure and reprocessing of the memory allows the brain and body to release the physical, mental and emotional pain associated with the memory, so the distress level inevitably comes down. The goal is to have the distress become a 0 (subjectively on a 0-10 scale) where it feels that no distress remains present. The memory is then successfully reprocessed and released into your long term memory, rather than looping and causing triggering responses to your present life circumstances.

Once the distress is a 0, a positive cognition is created and reinforced through bilateral stimulation as well, and once it feels absolutely true (this is gauged subjectively on a number scale as well) as an inner felt sense, it is practiced with future templates. Imagining yourself accessing this new positive cognition in potentially distressing or triggering circumstances within the future helps to create new patterns and possibilities. Through this work you can now begin to respond and react within those future challenging moments in a more grounded and steady manner.

All that I’ve described so far is a very rough and quick overview, there are certainly many more elements incorporated into EMDR therapy, however this intended as just a basic gist. Our goal is to rewrite negative cognitions, or beliefs about the self, that have been created or reinforced through these distressing memories, experiences, and traumas. These experiences created beliefs about the self that perpetuated patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that can create negative internal experiences as well as difficulty feeling truly confident, hopeful, grounded, and worthy just as you are.

Through the inner work, you can release the trauma still stored mentally, physically, and emotionally, and therefore release the negative beliefs that have arisen out of those experiences. This creates a new way of existing within your life that is freeing and empowering.

With a traditional 50 minute session there is some preparation, potentially reprocessing and desensitization, verbal processing, grounding and re-stabilization in a relatively short time. With an EMDR intensive you are in that potentially reprocessing and desensitization phase for a much more extended period of time. I have found that a 2.5-hour EMDR intensive is similar to approximately 4 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. A 4-hour intensive is similar to approximately 6-7 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. There are always potentially other elements incorporated into sessions depending on each person’s individual needs along the way.

If you are someone who has done some personal work already and feels that EMDR could be helpful to resolve some traumatic memories, this could feel really nice, to get in a lot of therapy in a shorter, more intensive period of time. These intensives are useful if you find that you have some patterns that you seem to repeat in relationships, with money, with food, with negative self-talk, and with specific anxieties. Initially, we identify the primary negative cognition, and then use the protocol to work through these memories or experiences that seem to repeat themselves in a way that makes sense for you. 

For example, if you are someone who finds that you seek out relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable over and over, there may be a limiting believe or negative cognition that is stuck in your subconscious that can be worked through in a short series of EMDR intensives. We first identify the negative belief about yourself, and then work with the memories that have created or reinforced that belief. Or, if you are someone who seems to fall into the same patterns with food, or money and spending that you have repeatedly tried to change, this too could be reinforced subconsciously by a negative internalized belief that can be worked through with EMDR intensives. I have found intensives to be helpful for those struggling with perfectionism, creative blocks, resistance to or fear of change, specific anxieties (such as flying, driving over bridges…) and much more.

If you are interested in an EMDR intensive, it is best to reach out to a few certified EMDR therapists who offer them, who are also licensed in your state. Many therapists are willing to offer a 15-minute consultation where you can describe your current needs/goals and they will be able to determine if you may be a good candidate for intensive EMDR therapy. I am licensed in New York and Virginia, and therefore only can offer them to those currently living in either of those states. For people with chronic or complex post traumatic stress disorder who are just beginning treatment, those with a low distress tolerance, and for those with certain chronic conditions, I have found that traditional weekly sessions tend to work best, however, everything is truly determined on a case-by-case basis. 

I hope I’ve piqued your interest and maybe you will think about considering EMDR intensives as part of your personal growth, mental wellness, and emotional health process. Here’s to confronting our negative internalized beliefs head-on and creating a more empowered, confident self and living a life fully immersed in a feeling of worthiness. You deserve to feel your best and live your best life.

Self-Awareness as a Path to Healing Emotional Eating

Many people struggle with emotional, and stress eating patterns and often feel frustrated, hopeless and helpless when it comes to changing these patterns.  Those who struggle with emotional eating often feel that a diet or wellness program is the only way out of the pattern. However, diets inflict control, restriction and force us into having to think about what to—or not to—eat constantly. Diets may have their place in the world, especially for someone who does not struggle with emotional eating patterns, however, the data is pretty compelling when it comes to the statistics related to the effectiveness of dieting.

It is estimated that each year 45 million Americans go on a diet and that $33 billion is spent on weight loss products. According to the CDC, nearly half of all adults attempted to lose weight in 2018. Research through the National Institute of Health has shown that more than half of the lost weight was regained within two years. The same study showed that by five years post diet, more than 80% of lost weight was regained. Those are not so great numbers in favor of dieting! Yet, the dieting industry continues to prey on people’s weaknesses, exploiting weight as a problem, and offering restriction and control as the only solution. However, clearly their solution is temporary, problematic and potentially damaging to both our minds and our bodies.

Emotional eating really is an attempt to care for ourselves. Soothing emotional pain and life’s stressors with food provides us with a break, a numbing out, a moment where we can feel really good while eating the chosen or desired food. As human beings, we really don’t like to feel uncomfortable or to have to experience pain in any way. We avoid pain, including emotional pain, at all costs, and most of us are not given great coping strategies for dealing with painful emotions as children. While we often end up causing a host of other problems for ourselves through this avoidance of emotional discomfort with food, it is quick, easily available, and works every time.

When this pattern of emotional eating becomes the only way that we know how to handle our emotional suffering, it creates a vicious and dangerous cycle where food is the problem and food is the solution. Emotional eating can lead to undesired weight gain, which incites additional uncomfortable feelings of failure, pain, frustration, and often shame. You can see how this cycle continues to loop, grow roots, and create so much suffering, despite the intended desire and attempt to avoid pain. Patterns of emotional eating often leads to body image struggles, internalized shame, and creates a much deeper suffering, which often only thrusts us back into the yo-yo dieting cycle. Unfortunately, dieting often feels like the only possible solution, yet with the statistics related to dieting you can really foresee where that will lead without some other, more helpful intervention.

This is where mindful and intuitive eating practices can begin to offer some support, hope and challenge to the dieting mentality. Learning to be present with food, listen to our bodies, respect feeling hungry and connect with our bodies in a real way is tremendously powerful. However, difficult and painful emotions will inevitably arise again. Especially if someone has endured trauma or significant suffering (which is pretty much all of us) and a trigger occurs, the pull towards emotional eating can be very strong no matter how much mindful eating you’ve practiced or how in tune you are with your bodies hunger and full cues.

Emotional eating is impossible to heal through a diet or by simply being present with food, hunger, fullness or rejecting diets alone. To heal emotional eating, addressing the uncomfortable emotions, learning about emotional patterns of avoidance, as well as our stressors, and understanding our emotions and processing them is vital to this healing. Healing from the inside out is the only way because emotional eating really has nothing to do with the food at all, but how the food numbs our feelings and comforts our suffering.

There is a misconception that if you heal from emotional eating you won’t find pleasure with eating and be able to enjoy food in the same way. This is a fear that needs to be cleared up immediately, and often arises out of the wake of dieting where deprivation and restriction are necessary. When you can heal from emotional eating and integrate mindful and intuitive eating practices in a way that allows you to be the expert on not only in what your body wants and needs, but also in what brings you pleasure, you can create an immensely pleasurable relationship with food. There is a big difference in eating to experience pleasure versus eating to eliminate pain.

When you explore your patterns, emotions, the what, when, and why you jump towards avoidance with food (or any in any other way) rather than feeling your feelings, you can develop awareness into yourself very deeply. Self-awareness is always the first step; self-awareness is always where we must start on any journey. Without awareness there cannot be any change. To begin, it is helpful to give space to your feelings, to begin to learn and create a language related to feelings and to practice awareness, in the moment if possible, or as reflection if you find that you missed a moment of emotional suppression.

Journaling, mindfulness practices, meditation and reading about emotions are all ways to get closer to our inner world. When we offer ourselves time for reflection on our deeper internal experiences and to determine what really is going on inside ourselves we can discover what are we really feeling and why it is that we feel this way. Discovering what brings ourselves pleasure, comfort, ease, and joy in non-food ways can help create coping strategies that are more beneficial and useful. With time, practice and constantly growing in our self-awareness, food can become unentangled from the web of our emotions.

Giving space to finding pleasure in eating, delighting in foods that do bring us pleasure, comfort, ease and joy when we are not in a space of stress or emotional suffering also creates an opportunity to heal. When stuck in patterns of emotional eating, finding actual joy in eating can trigger feelings of shame or undeservingness, this is an important area to explore as well. When diets, restriction, hiding or withholding pleasure as punishment have been entangled with food, pleasure, body image, and eating, then choosing to eat decadent foods can feel like “cheating.” This is the process of letting go of old stories, patterns and ways of being with food and with ourselves. If eating something we desire causes increased discomfort, this the opposite of our original intent when it comes to healing our relationship with food. It’s helpful to get curious about how this fits into each of our own food stories.

This healing process from the inside out requires a willingness to let ourselves be a work in progress. So for now, start with self-awareness, what do you notice about your patterns? What does it mean about you when you find yourself emotional eating? Get curious. Journal. Spend time in deeper self-reflection. When we can become aware of our patterns, as well as the negative internalized beliefs more clearly we can begin to dive deeper and deeper into the exploration of emotions. This is the work required to truly heal from emotional eating. I hope you find some time to be present with your patterns, your self, and I’ll be back soon with more specific ways to help explore emotions fully and deeply as you continue along your healing journey.

Understanding Triggers

The word trigger has become increasingly commonplace in our day to day language, but really, what are triggers and how can we best handle them?

A trigger happens when a current experience of discomfort touches on an old inner wound. This current experience of discomfort then reignites the old uncomfortable feeling(s) or experience(s), the unprocessed wound(s), or trauma(s). Negative thought patterns then get stirred and this often comes with a strong physical, emotional, and mental response. This response overwhelms the nervous system and is not necessarily congruent with the current uncomfortable experience, or trigger.

A trigger is experienced in the present and can be something someone says, doesn’t say, a look, a smell, a physical sensation, a tone of voice, or anything else that then stimulates the memory networks connected to the unprocessed trauma(s) or old wound(s) and brings up subconscious negative internalized beliefs about ourselves, such as I am unsafe, I am inadequate, I am unworthy, I am in danger and so on. The nervous system responds as if we are in danger. There is a big difference between being upset and being triggered. 

When triggered, we temporarily regress back to that feeling state associated with unprocessed emotions or experiences and the nervous system takes over as form of self-protection. This response plummets us into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. This usually happens without the ability to think it through, it is an automatic reactionary response to re-experiencing the old wounds of the past tied up into the present triggering experience. This is a survival instinct to avoid suffering and danger.

This nervous system response to a trigger is something that luckily, we can begin to manage more effectively with self-awareness and learning to regulate our nervous systems more effectively. It takes a whole lot of effort and consistent practice, but it is possible. If you have deeper trauma, it is helpful to do this with the support of a therapist who practices from an evidence-based, trauma informed approach. If you suffer from PTSD, while some of this information may be useful, I highly recommend working with a therapist who specializes in PTSD as the trigger responses are likely more extreme and automatic and may be challenging to process on your own.

Self-awareness is the key to understanding and learning to redirect our triggers. Without awareness, we cannot change. With awareness, we can begin to see our own patterns and begin to make small, incremental changes that lead towards more self-regulation of our nervous systems. With increased awareness and coping strategies, we can develop the ability to respond to the trigger versus being thrown into the automatic reactionary impulse of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

Gaining self-awareness takes a willingness to investigate our own reactionary behavior patterns when triggered. Journaling about triggers, keeping a “trigger log” and taking copious notes about all of the details related to what you experienced— what it was, who it was, why it was, and very importantly, what it brought up for you that is old and from your past. Having this information gives you a place to begin. Taking notes about your response to being triggered, what was happening in your body, your mind, your breath during and after the trigger, this is where your self-awareness begins to grow. Once you have some data, you can begin to consider where to intervene with these occurrences and experiences in a way that supports your growth.

One way you can begin to understand your own triggers more effectively is to know what reaction it causes within you when you feel triggered. These are the negative internalized beliefs, negative cognitions or negative thought patterns that can loop in our brains based on early childhood experiences. The messaging we took in about our self-worth in these experiences as well as what we witnessed in the behaviors of our caretakers. We’ve picked these beliefs up and respond to them as if they are true, this self-awareness work is about beginning to understand that it is old, and to begin to challenge the messaging and eventually re-writing with the language that is actually true, useful and empowering.

Some examples of negative cognitions/negative internalized beliefs are:

I am not good enough

I am not worthy

I am powerless

I am helpless

I am not in control

I am a bad person

There is something wrong with me

I am a disappointment

I am a failure

I am inadequate

I am different and don’t belong

I am unlovable

I can’t trust anyone

I am unsafe

I can’t trust myself

I have to be perfect to be loved

The list can go on and on, however these are some of the most common negative cognitions that are experienced by many people. When we are triggered, if there are experiences in the past that have made us feel this way about ourselves, we can get stuck in a pattern of negative self-talk, or have a trauma response that makes us feel that this negative cognition or feeling state is indeed true. If we don’t learn how to manage these negative cognitions it can lead to compensatory, self-sabotaging behaviors such as using food, substances, mindless activities or anything else to avoid the discomfort that is experienced in mind and body. Emotional soothing with food or any other emotional numbing is only a temporary release and leads to increased negative feelings about ourselves. When we become the observer of the trigger and understand where it came from, we can begin to take our nervous systems back and learn to create and offer more self-compassion.

Over time, with self-awareness and practice we can create a new internalized belief structure such as:

I am good enough

I am worthy

I am powerful, or I own my power, or I now have choices

I am strong

I am now in control

I am a good person, or I am learning and growing every day, or I forgive myself

I am ok just the way I am 

I accept myself as I am

I can succeed

I am enough

I am unique, or I am ok just as I am

I am lovable, or I deserve love

I can choose whom I trust

I am safe, or in this moment I am safe

I am learning to trust myself, or I trust myself

I am ok as I am

When we practice accessing and internalizing these positive cognitions we can create a more compassionate relationship with ourselves. With practice and continued self-awareness we can soften the triggers and begin to operate outside of these negative, faulty beliefs. The most effective way to begin to re-write our internal language is to practice. Have the statement that is more useful, true and positive available at all times. Write it down, send it to yourself as a reminder on your phone, practice saying it out loud. Once we build this deeper awareness, we can begin to practice regulating our nervous systems in a way that leads to better self-regulation. Some of the most effective time we can spend is practicing learning these very skills and tools.

Breathing practices, meditation, mindfulness, thought work, movement, somatic awareness and embodiment, journaling, regular self-care, self-compassion practices, and talking through challenges with someone you trust are all great places to start. There are many forms of therapy that help to address thoughts and faulty beliefs and nervous system regulation if you feel you could benefit from further support as you heal. If you are someone who suffers from feeling triggered frequently, I hope you will pick one area to begin your journey towards deeper self-awareness and see where it leads. Spend time reflecting on whatever practices you may choose and notice the impact.

As you grown in your self-awareness and empowerment, you will begin to change the language of how you communicate your triggers with others. You can begin to shift your language from victim mode, “you triggered me” to self-ownership mode, “I was triggered when___________.” When we take responsibility we feel more empowered to choose our responses and less helpless and hopeless that change is possible. If someone else is in control of our responses we can’t truly believe in our capacity for change. However, if we are the ones beginning to learn to take control of our reactions and responses we take our power back and gain confidence in our capability for change. This increases our inner strength over time. It will not be an easy process. It requires a great deal of time, self-awareness, practice and more practice. It also does not mean we won’t get triggered in a way that is uncomfortable or even unmanageable at times. When you learn self-regulation, self-soothing and nervous system awareness and stabilization skills that change how you relate to any triggers, it will be life changing. When you are in control of your reactions and have this level of self-awareness you are becoming truly self-empowered.