Trauma wants to be processed (EMDR approach)
Today there were three sessions in a row, three traumatic experiences, three stuck memories — the death of a loved one, being driven to attempt suicide, experiencing violence. If there is any meaning to the hackneyed phrase “the world will never be the same again,” it is about this. Up to some point, you were a relatively normal, relatively intact pre-traumatic personality, and suddenly your world is not just crumbling, but collapsing with unprecedented speed, like in videos about the targeted collapse of high-rise buildings, only this is not a video, this is your life.
An event that breaks out of your everyday life, your usual way of life, your ideas about the order of things, accompanied by high-intensity emotions, becomes traumatic. The regular information processing mechanisms in the brain begin to slip, unable to grind the cobblestones that have fallen into their gears, and it sometimes gets stuck there for decades.
But the cobblestone wants to be ground up, the trauma wants to be conscious, spoken, experienced to the end, integrated into normal memories, strives to become, in the language of Gestaltists, a completed event. However, in this pursuit she encounters “other basic human needs — peace, emotional security” and predictability. “All three of these needs are disrupted by the intrusion of a disturbing memory, and this is the main…
