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Say That Again! - A Smorgasbord of Suggestions, Sayings and Scripts for the EMDR Practitioner
von: Kriss Jarecki LCSWR
BookBaby, 2022
ISBN: 9781667851860 , 144 Seiten
Format: ePUB
Kopierschutz: frei
Preis: 7,13 EUR
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Say That Again! - A Smorgasbord of Suggestions, Sayings and Scripts for the EMDR Practitioner
Chapter Two
The Busy Brain
At the beginning of therapy clients often ask questions, such as “What’s wrong with my brain that I can’t let go of that memory or everyone says I overreact to things and I think there’s something wrong with me!”
Offering a reasonable explanation for what’s happening to the clients and a believable solution is crucial not only for treatment buy-in, but also for helping the client establish the belief that they can heal. The positive belief that one is having a normal response to a stressor and can heal actually starts the brain on a path toward healing. A recent analysis of various studies concluded that the health benefits of positive thinking happen independently of the harm caused by negative states, such as pessimism or stress, and are roughly comparable in magnitude.
Optimism seems to reduce stress-induced inflammation and levels of stress hormones, such as cortisol. It may also reduce susceptibility to disease by dampening sympathetic nervous system activity (which winds us up) and stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system (which calms us back into a healthy balance). The latter governs what’s called the “rest-and-digest” response — the opposite of fight-flight-freeze. Just as helpful as taking a rosy view of the future is having an optimistic view of yourself.5 A person with a growth mindset believes that he or she can get smarter, better, or more skilled at something through sustained effort — which is exactly what neuroplasticity — the process of the brain changing in response to changes in thinking, behavior, and life experience — indicates. You might say that a growth mindset is simply accepting the idea of neuroplasticity on a broad level! I will talk more about neuroplasticity and neurogenesis later in this chapter.
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a client’s facial features, body stance, and vocalizations change when I say things like, “One reason you’re thinking about that event all the time is because, when our brain doesn’t produce enough cortisol, information doesn’t flow as well throughout the brain. It’s like a stream that dries up and fish swimming in the stream get stuck in place. That’s what your thoughts do too” or “Too much cortisol causes information to be overly active and neurons transmitting information are constantly firing like firecrackers. This means that information is constantly firing or blowing up in your face and that’s one reason you’re having flashbacks.”
I suggest keeping the 4 R’s of Trauma-Informed Care6 at the forefront of your awareness, not only when first starting to work with a client, but also throughout treatment:
1.Realization about trauma and how it can affect people and groups
2.Recognizing the signs of trauma
3.(Having a system which can) Respond to trauma
4.Resisting re-traumatization
Francine Shapiro, the developer of EMDR, gave us the Adaptive Information Processing model (AIP), which says that we have a natural ability to digest experiences — to process incoming information adaptively so we know how to interact with the experience and utilize the experience for learning.7 I like to compare this to our natural ability to digest food or heal from wounds. When we get a cut, it bleeds to get any dirt and germs out, a scab forms in order to protect the area while it heals, and the scab falls off when healing is complete. When we eat something, we chew it and swallow it, our digestive juices break the food down, and nutrients we need go to our brain and body, and what we don’t use comes out in waste.
Here are ways to explain to clients how we digest experiences, as well as how information can get stuck and what happens when it does. Sharing information like this not only educates the client and others about trauma, but it gives us a foundation to discuss what to do about it.
The Busy Brain
1.“Every experience we have goes through a process in our brain in about 1 millisecond. If we slowed the process down enough to see it go step-by-step, this is what we would see.
2.First, the experience comes at us in individual pieces through our senses (hearing, taste, touch, etc.).
3.Then, the pieces travel to our right brain and that section of the brain is responsible for survival. It looks at the parts/pieces of the experience material and decides if it is safe for us to be around it and interact with it or if we need to do things like run or fight. For example, let’s say you’re going to Harry’s Happy Hamburger Hut for lunch with friends. You might have physical hunger, images of the burger and your friends, feeling excitement about going and thinking things, like ‘I deserve a burger as I’ve worked out a lot this week.’ Let’s say the right brain decides it’s safe for you to continue with this experience.
4.The experience pieces then go through the middle of our brain where pictures are taken for memorabilia. For example, if I asked you what your house looks like, you will get a picture of it in your mind and be able to describe it to me. This area is also known as our third eye.
5.Next, the experience pieces go to the left side of the brain and that side puts the parts in order so we know what to do first, second, third, etc. The fancy term for this is Coherent Narrative. For example, I know I have to get dressed and then drive to Harry’s Happy Hamburger Hut to meet friends. Then, I order and pay for my meal, etc. The left side of the brain also puts words to the experience. Here, Broca’s area allows us to speak and Wernicke’s area contains our capacity to listen. Continuing with the above example, I verbalize my order to the attendant with my Broca’s area and the attendant hears me and makes meaning with their Wernicke’s area. The left side also pulls from past experiences to help us know what to do, what things are, how to use things, etc. For example, I know the directions to Harry’s because I’ve been there before. I know what’s in front of me is called a cheeseburger and I know it is food to eat because I’ve had it before. I know what my friends are talking about when they bring up past events we have experienced together and how to verbalize my responses. The next day I will remember hanging out with my friends and eating cheeseburgers because the experience travels to the Cerebral Cortex located at the top of the brain and goes into long term memory to be stored.
6.Sometimes an experience is too big to be processed. A person may be too young to manage the experience or maybe there are too many experiences happening at once or one after another so there’s no time to digest them. So, the experience comes through our senses first, like it’s supposed to, but when it gets to the right brain, parts or all of the experience get stuck, backed up, and piled high. Our right brain wants to push those stuck pieces through to make room for new experiences, but like a tire spinning in mud or a CD stuck in a scratch, it keeps trying to move forward, but it can’t. However, we still need to function in our daily life so we might decide to throw the stuff in the brain’s closet. For example, do you have a closet or a drawer where you throw things that you just don’ have time to deal with or don’t want to deal with? What typically happens is that eventually the drawer or closet gets too full and can’t close.
7.So, the stuck pieces just fall all around in a big pile and that’s all the right brain keeps looking at — because that’s all it can see. It’s like a packed closet where all we can see is the stuff in front, but can’t see or get at all the stuff piled behind. When this happens, it might feel like an experience is always ‘in our face;’ it’s hard to stop thinking about it, and it can feel like it just happened yesterday even if it was years ago.
8.Another problem is if our brain only sees and reads the pile of stuck stuff that’s in the way and not what’s currently going on in our lives. The right brain might tell us something is not safe and to run when, in reality, it’s not dangerous at all. For example, have you ever seen a person ‘freak out’ over a tiny bug or spider? That’s his right brain reading a stuck experience like getting stung by bees and not the current one, thus telling the body to ‘run.’ It’s important to use an example that fits for the individual client so it makes sense to them.
9.“Your brain and body are always trying to balance and when there is a stuck point, our body and brain do what they have to in order to try and manage. The result is that we might have anxiety, depression, sleep issues, phobias, addictions, OCD, etc.
10.We...