Adapted from article by Kristen Milstead
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, after a couple goes through a bad breakup, each person in the relationship separately undergoes a medical procedure to have all memories of the other person entirely erased.
This is such a fascinating concept. If you remove the memories of someone, what remains?
If you grow and change through your interactions with others, does the changed version of yourself remain if the other person ceases to exist in your world? Who do you become at that point?
If you have been traumatized by a relationship but it can no longer hurt you, what then will you believe is the source of the trauma– or will you simply believe that you are the trauma?
Enter Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy...
What is EMDR?
EMDR is a type of therapy that can reduce the physiological distress associated with traumatic memories. The arousal triggered by those memories can be lessened or eliminated through this type of therapy when clients purposely focus on a memory and at the same time focus their attention, often visually, on something outside themselves.
It’s a nontraditional form of therapy because it doesn’t rely on talking about thoughts or feelings, but on stimulating the brain through the external environment. It is an attempt to change the emotions that people continue to feel months or years after an event by accessing the parts of the brain that are generating those emotions when the memories are triggered.
There have been many studies that have shown EMDR to be very effective for a variety of traumatizing experiences, and not many sessions are needed until improvement begins to show when the person is out of a traumatizing environment.
EMDR appears to work because the rapid eye movement allows neural networks in the brain to open up to allowing access to the memories in ways that they can be cognitively processed differently in safe environments beyond the ones in which the original trauma took place.
The memories can then be replaced by empowering thoughts or feelings or sometimes fade. They often stop generating a level of arousal that triggers anxiety, nightmares, flashbacks, and other issues associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder so that a person can begin to live a life free from the hold those memories have had over them.
How EMDR Can Help Someone Who Has Experienced Abuse?
A person who has been in an abusive relationship may have many negative memories of one or several different types of abuse: physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, or verbal.
During a session of EMDR therapy, they are asked to focus on thinking about the details of a memory of one of the experiences of abuse while also viewing the external stimulus generated by the therapist for several seconds or minutes.
This focus on negative memories is generally interspersed with a discussion or focus on positive affirmations, memories, or new thoughts about how the memory feels. The therapist usually also discusses how to continue processing outside the sessions and to self-soothe.
Many things may happen to the negative memories of abuse during a session: their details may begin to fade; the experience may feel less immediate or all-encompassing; the memories may lose some or all of their emotional impact; the person may begin to view the memories differently– for example, with humor or pity for the abuser, by suddenly seeing them as ridiculous or the memories as not worth his or her time to dwell on.
Why does this happen? The brain is suddenly “unblocked” and the person in the therapy can think differently about the experience. After experiencing EMDR, for many clients, the trauma itself fades in significance, and the experience itself will only have the meaning that the individual who lived it chooses to assign to it. Control is in the hands of the survivor.
Can EMDR Be Helpful for Narcissistic Abuse?
It’s easy to understand why someone screaming humiliating names at you, sexually assaulting you, or physically harming you is abusive. It’s easy to explain it, too. When most people think of abuse, this is what they think about. Yet this is why traditional definitions of abuse are not sufficient when it comes to narcissistic abuse because the damage done is not encompassed by talking about all of the traditional ways in which abusers hurt their partners.
Narcissistic abusers may do these things, but there is an added layer on top through which they control and harm their partners through intentional deception, brainwashing, and repeated betrayals of the partner’s core identity.
More specifically:
Narcissists lie about who they are, their true intentions, their pasts, what they are really thinking, their emotions, who else they are involved with, and almost everything about themselves. Their partners can never be sure when they are telling the truth. They lie even to themselves and take advantage of the basic social contract that when two people enter a relationship, they are looking out for each other’s best interests as well as their own.
Narcissists use the same tactics to brainwash their victims that are used by cults.
Narcissists use their deception and brainwashing to continually betray their partners at the most intimate levels of the self beyond traditional forms of psychological abuse. This is often done through means such as using other people to triangulate the partner, developing two sets of rules and threatening to leave if this is not accepted, taking advantage of the cognitive dissonance that develops in the partner by using intermittent reinforcement.
Most of this happens covertly and without any “event” that produces a memory.
If there was an event, that individual act is often so minor and so petty, that it wasn’t the act itself that caused the trauma, but the buildup of dozens or hundreds of them over time, such as triangulating a partner with an ex through social media one “Facebook like” at a time.
Much of the damage done by a narcissist is done in the dark. Long-term narcissistic abuse can cause brain damage, according to Kim Saeed, because it keeps the amygdala in a constant state of anxiety: “Victims of narcissistic abuse live in this state almost daily.” Saaed goes on to say that partners use a variety of tactics to try to manage it, including denial and compartmentalization.
I believe that this hyperarousal occurs because of the confusion that results from the relationship, which is set into motion through the deception and maintained through brainwashing.
Saaed also suggests EMDR for correcting the brain damage done by narcissistic abuse.
A therapist, like myself, who has specialized training in EMDR & Narcissistic Abuse knows how to adjust the traditional EMDR protocols to target "clusters" of memories & experiences in addition to targeting the addictive factors of the relationship. Narcissistic Abuse is a type of "complex trauma." It is months and sometimes years of repeated abuse--"a death of identity by 1000 cuts" so to speak. The goal is to not only transform the trauma but also rebuild the identity that the abuse has stolen. The therapeutic relationship is one of partnership and also an important tool in healing process.
Contact me to find out how I can support your journey!
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