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EMDR / EFT / DNRS - dealing with emotional trauma

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Posted 1/18/2020 1:50 AM (GMT 0)
Can anyone with understanding explain the differences in these therapies/ techniques?

At some point, I need some kind of therapy. I read about EMDR for PTSD. I feel like I have ongoing (not Post)TSD. The EMDR sounds like it’s based on a particular event or trauma. I don’t have a specific event. I have long term never ending trauma of symptoms, mold/chemical sensitivities, and inability to avoid mold exposure and have safe housing and stable environment. No closure ever. Ongoing never ending trauma.

I don’t know what kind of help I need. When I do let myself feel too much, I tap into some deep, raw emotional stuff. I am actually afraid of addressing it, as heavy emotional upheaval can really affect the immune system and make Lyme/co/CIRS, etc. much worse.

Thoughts? Comments? Experiences?
Posted 1/18/2020 1:53 AM (GMT 0)
Based on what you just said you are a textbook John Sarno case. I’d read The Divided Mind
Posted 1/18/2020 2:10 AM (GMT 0)

dcd2103 said...
Based on what you just said you are a textbook John Sarno case. I’d read The Divided Mind


I just looked that up. Doesn’t sound remotely like what I deal with.

He believes that pain is psychosomatic. Also says “ Schechter and Sarno consider a prior history of other psychosomatic disorders an indication that the patient may have TMS. They list irritable bowel syndrome and tension headache as examples of psychosomatic disorders.”. IBS and tension headaches are psychosomatic? Seriously? No offense, but I don’t believe in psychosomatic. It’s intellectualized BS propagated by doctors who can’t find the root cause of ailments.

Based on their philosophies, anyone with Lyme would have x number of psychosomatic ailments.

Post Edited (WalkingbyFaith) : 1/17/2020 7:21:08 PM (GMT-7)

Posted 1/18/2020 2:13 AM (GMT 0)
I have written a lot about DNRS that I'm sure you have seen, so I won't recap all of it, but I'll say that relative to the other two it is not designed to process trauma. The goal of DNRS is rewiring the brain in order to optimize the work of the limbic system and achieve symptom resolution. It's not a form of mental health therapy. It's a very physical process neurologically (though it may not seem like it until you learn the specifics) and takes time and effort.

EFT is great for anxiety specifically. As you do the tapping sequence (easily learned for free online, takes maybe three minutes to do) you say something along the lines of "Even though this crappy thing is happening, I [believe this positive thing, too." For example, "Even though I'm freaked out by this vertigo, I know that my body will work through this and I will be okay soon." Sometimes people just repeat that one thing over and over, and others say it once and vent their anxious and troubling thoughts the rest of the time and then say it again at the end. So it might be, "Even though I'm freaked out by this vertigo, I know that my body will work through this. I try to believe this stuff is temporary, but it's so hard to have hope sometimes when new symptoms keep coming and coming, like an awful rollercoaster I'm trapped on, and no one really seems to know how to help me, and I feel so isolated and don't know how much more I can deal with. Even though I'm freaked out by this vertigo, I know that my body will work through this." So you bookend it with the reassuring sentence. The idea is that tapping the specific points in the specific sequence allows the places in your body that these feelings are stored to let go, clear out, and move those emotions around. (This isn't esoteric or controversial; anyone with a background in trauma psych knows trauma lives in the body. Dislodging these things and interrupting these patterns can lead to symptom relief.) EFT is super easy, fast, and free. Nothing to lose.

EMDR is also pretty cool, but you should see a professional EMDR therapist (not use the videos on YouTube). A lot of people notice a difference in only one session, but it's a good idea to commit to a few. It's not complicated, either. You watch lights move on a little screen while you talk about trauma. (Some use audio tones through headphones instead of the lights.) It's okay if you can't pinpoint a single incident. The patterns you are seeing (or hearing) engage different parts of your brain while you talk about the trauma, which allows you to integrate the experience more fully and stops it from producing the cascade of reactions it might otherwise produce when you talk about it (sweating, nervousness, fear, sadness, nausea ... and consequently gut dysfunction, immune weakness, depression, adrenal issues, chronic pain....). Stopping those neural pathways - the habits your brain has fallen into that perpetuate symptoms - is crucial, and EMDR makes it pretty easy. You don't have to analyze anything, justify anything, figure anything out. Just sit there and describe.

I did rape crisis work for years, so all of this is my wheelhouse. Hope that helps!
Posted 1/18/2020 2:23 AM (GMT 0)
Saw the mention of Sarno....

He's a big name in mind-body medicine and has done some important work, no question, but he can be a condescending and victim-blamey, and his focus has been mostly on straight-up pain. Some people read his books and are left feeling like they are failures if they can't simply "let go" of the traumas holding them back and causing their symptoms. (Anecdotally, apparently he was like this in person, too, when people met with him as their doctor.)

For people with complex chronic illness, I like to recommend the app Curable. It's a much more updated approach, and it does an excellent job explaining how to process things that may be affecting your body. It contains four aspects: short educational podcasts about pain science, writing exercises, meditations, and brain training exercises. If you are not interested in seeing a mind-body medicine therapist (or can't find one) then Curable is a great place to start with mind-body medicine. It's $15 per month.

Don't be put off if Sarno sounds off-putting. He's the biggest name, but he's not the be all and end all of mind-body medicine anymore.
Posted 1/18/2020 2:26 AM (GMT 0)
He believed that by repressing emotions, which is exactly what you said you do, the body, through the autonomic nervous system, creates symptoms for you to focus on so you don’t have to deal with the repressed emotions. The goal is to recognize this and deal with these emotions thereby removing the trigger to your autonomic nervous system. It’s interesting he goes through the history how Charcot and Freud and a bunch of others were onto this.

Sarno is a huge deal there’s a whole wing at NYU dedicated to him, he literally invented this branch of pain management, and fingered the autonomic nervous system as the culprit, long before Annie Hopper. Annie Hopper and Ashok Gupta just took what he did and tried to cut at the onion a little differently, so it overlaps A LOT with DNRS...if you’re doing/considering DNRS not sure how you can say it’s not even remotely close. You say you don’t believe in psychosomatic pain, then what do you think you’d be doing w DNRS?
It’s basically the same idea but worded differently.

Go over to the Rusk Institute for Rehabilitation at NYU, they’re still practicing his work there. They made a movie about him a few years ago called All The Rage. He died the night before the premier. I found out about him because a coworker had incurable back pain for 5y, multiple surgeries, then went to see Sarno and was able to beat it with his methods. But it’s all BS according to you.

Not to mention, I find it comical that out of all the things he claims could be caused by a mind body disorder, it’s tension headache and IBS you pick a fight w, two things everyone seems to agree can be caused by stress. I was was literally just in my GIs office on Wednesday trying to get Enteragram, and he gave me a lecture about how too much stress could be causing my IBS.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 1/18/2020 7:31:57 AM (GMT-7)

Posted 1/18/2020 3:44 AM (GMT 0)
Is there a consensus here that emotional trauma is likely playing at least some role in those of us who are chronic? I feel like DNRS touches on that a slight bit with her memory visualizations and work with "higher self". For me this can bring up sadness and lead to feeling pretty empty because of where I am in life right now. Once I get to that place the emotional stuff needs to be processed so I guess there's an aspect there
Posted 1/18/2020 4:02 AM (GMT 0)
Definitely agree. I think chronic illnesses take hold of those who are vulnerable, when the sum total of all stressors combines to push the body out of homeostasis. Methylation issues, CIRS genetics, mercury toxicity, these are physiological vulnerabilities...but so is emotional trauma and the autonomic dysfunction that comes w it.

I saw a TED Talk by a researcher, wish I could recall her name, who presented compelling data that those who are sexually or emotionally abused during childhood grow up with significantly increased risk if developed chronic illness. Wish i could find it. She claimed it was due to “autonomic priming” as well.

I was bitten by multiple ticks in my late teens and early 20s. Didn’t get sick until 31, 3m after i dealt with some severe emotional issues due to a personal issue which really whalloped me, and took a toll on my whole body. A couple years later I was chronically ill and with no answers, so I went to the Rusk Institute and met with Sarnos protege Ira Rashbaum. After talking to a Sarno trained psychologist they set me up with, I was able to unpack a ton of stuff, and I’m so glad I did it. Was also able to keep my symptoms at bay for 2y, but unfortunately I was already well on my way to autoimmunity and after about a year of stopping therapy i relapsed and came down with full blow autoimmune issues. If I hadn’t unpacked that stuff tho, I’m not sure where I’d be, it made me more resilient. Wish i had done it earlier.
Posted 1/18/2020 2:48 PM (GMT 0)
There are plenty of studies on the link between trauma and chronic illness, especially as pertains to childhood trauma. Adverse childhood experiences (ACE) especially get a ton of press.

I think it's important to talk about the word "psychosomatic" here. Colloquially, it is used as a dismissive term. It's like when we go to a mainstream PCP before we're diagnosed and they tell us that it's "all in our heads" and that we need to take an antidepressant. I think a lot of us see that term and are instantly offended! And with good reason, in terms of how it's usually used. But it's like when a person with a wanted pregnancy miscarries a fetus and the medical term is "abortion," or when a 35yo is pregnant and the medical term for her age group is "elderly." Maybe medical folks should revise their terms, but these terms are not always used medically the way we use them in everyday language.

In the context of mind-body medicine, "psychosomatic" just means that the thoughts impact the body. Does anyone really dispute that - that people sometimes throw up before a big speech, that heart rates race when you see someone you have a crush on, that people produce distinctive-smelling "flop sweat" sometimes when they are nervous? We all know these things are connected. The things is, that connection can be used very powerfully for healing or for dysfunction.

The nervous system controls and impacts everything in our bodies - digestion, heart rate, sleep, mood, immunity, inflammation, hormones, all of the senses, breath, movement, balance, elimination, etc. We can use thoughts and emotions to tinker with our nervous systems, and these programs take advantage of that. Conversely, when trauma and emotional difficulties persist, they stress out all of the systems in the body. Then when Borrelia or EBV or Aspergillis enter into the mix, the body is more susceptible to dysfunction and the dysfunction can be more entrenched. I don't think anyone is arguing that heavy metals and bartonella don't cause symptoms unless you have emotional issues, but emotional issues (which I've gotta say I think we all have to varying degrees) can make those issues more likely to remain chronic and stubborn.

Not everyone has this experience, but I have found more benefit from working on mind-body medicine (technically psychosomatic!) than anything antimicrobial I have done. And there are other issues at play, like our microbiomes. (That's definitely related to the nervous system, but the nervous system does not control it.) But I think for a lot of people the fear we feel around symptoms helps the symptoms persist because strong emotions cement neural pathways. (Again, this is the non-controversial science of neuroplasticity, not some fringe theory.) So even after the offending spirochete (or whatever) is gone, its effects can linger. It is thought that emotional trauma that predates the microbes (or mycotoxins or metals or viruses) can predispose us to stronger reactions because our body is already storing all these things to react to.

One of the things that Curable does really well is condense the science of this stuff into manageably short podcasts. There are some on the placebo effect that absolutely blow my mind. Like the placebo effect even works with surgery! How, right?! The mind is very powerful, and should be harnessed as medical treatment. That does not mean pain and other symptoms are an illusion. They are not indicative of weakness or failure or doing something the wrong way. They all happen by a natural and logical and physical process. The way we understand medical treatment is just flawed and/or incomplete.

When doctors with no training in mind-body medicine advise people to "deal with" past trauma or to "reduce stress" to eliminate a condition, it makes me want to punch people. It makes people feel blamed for their own misery and is entirely unproductive.
Posted 1/18/2020 2:53 PM (GMT 0)
There’s a book - how to heal yourself when no one else can - by amy scher. I started some of her exercises and I do feel they help you work through old stuff. She had lyme herself. I struggle with the muscle testing stuff - part of me believes in it and the other part doesn’t.

Might be a place to start. If it doesn’t help your out some time and $12 cost of book.

It does sound like the ongoing trauma may be better suited to DNRS. It gives you steps to deal with exposures on a daily basis. I thought it was a bit confusing and lots of steps. You really need to commit to it and I was only half in. Annie Hopper is a bit cheesy.

Post Edited (k07) : 1/18/2020 7:58:16 AM (GMT-7)

Posted 1/18/2020 2:58 PM (GMT 0)
Very good post Saraeli!!! Very insightful and summed the issue up well. I never once felt like Sarno was victim blaming me, but I have heard others say that so it must be true. Going to look into Curable.
Posted 1/18/2020 3:22 PM (GMT 0)

dcd2103 said...
Definitely agree. I think chronic illnesses take hold of those who are vulnerable, when the sum total of all stressors combines to push the body out of homeostasis. Methylation issues, CIRS genetics, mercury toxicity, these are physiological vulnerabilities...but so is emotional trauma and the autonomic dysfunction that comes w it.

Agree with this. I feel it's us who have all the predispositions combined- genetic, gut, toxicity and everything else. They probably all have to be addressed simultaneously
Posted 1/18/2020 3:48 PM (GMT 0)
Definitely Aerose, that’s what I been doing recently.

Here’s that TED Talk I was referring to

https://youtu.be/95ovIJ3dsNk
Posted 1/18/2020 4:17 PM (GMT 0)
The Bible. Jesus Christ can do what no one, not even ourselves, can do. In Him is true freedom.
Posted 1/18/2020 5:43 PM (GMT 0)
Great post Saraeli. The mind is very powerful. I’m going to look into Curable too.
Posted 1/18/2020 6:12 PM (GMT 0)

ChristianWithLyme said...
The Bible. Jesus Christ can do what no one, not even ourselves, can do. In Him is true freedom.

Thank you. I’m trying to get back to this.
Posted 1/18/2020 6:13 PM (GMT 0)
Thanks to everyone for the responses. Very informative. I will likely have to forge my own path through this.
Posted 1/18/2020 7:01 PM (GMT 0)
I hear you, WBF. Whatever you do in the realm of what we've been discussing really has to feel right to you. I'm glad you asked about EMDR and EFT, as I don't see them discussed on here a lot.

As always, I am rooting for you!
Posted 1/21/2021 5:16 AM (GMT 0)
Blakeley has been seeing a counselor for maybe two months now. At today’s visit, the counselor saw how bad Blakeley was, as it’s been an emotional time for her lately. The lady talked to blakeley about EMDR and describes it to her and why she thinks it would help her. The concern we have is that, as you said in the OP, it is ongoing trauma to process, not just past trauma.

Just wanted to let you know that we plan on trying it and will keep you posted on how it goes. I have also been teetering with the idea of DNRS but since this was brought up, I think we will give it a go first.
Posted 1/21/2021 11:27 AM (GMT 0)
Hey WBF I’m no expert but I started EMDR therapy last week, I’ve only had one session so hard to say what it will do but I’m happy to keep you updated.

I lost my brother 4 years ago, just before I got bit! So I’m hoping it will help me heal from that as I believe that has contributed to my health anxiety which I do feel holds me back in so many ways.

Post Edited (Szabo246) : 1/21/2021 4:37:21 AM (GMT-7)

Posted 1/21/2021 3:22 PM (GMT 0)
Blakeleysmom and Szabo,

Thanks for posting. Please do post more follow-ups as you try this out.
Posted 1/25/2021 12:00 PM (GMT 0)
First, look into C-PTSD, complex PTSD. It's what you said, not "Post" but ongoing.

I've been working on trauma and mental health the last year and it's really putting a lot in perspective and helping me process Lyme. Warning, it brought up some extremely painful stuff I didn't even realize was there. But that's EXACTLY why I got sick. I ignored warning signs since I was a child (since I didn't know any better, and society has no awareness) and suppressed so much pain, it manifested in poor health. A tick bite cocktail had the perfect opportunity to take me down, because I was so dysfunctional from childhood trauma (ACEs that pretty much everyone goes through and are often ignored).

For those rooted in religious beliefs, I recommend starting with Dr. Caroline Leaf's book "Switch on your Brain." It bridges the gap between faith and psychology that gave me the ability to even start working on this. Her 5-step process (now called NeuroCycle) is now a habit for me and a downright miraculous skill in its ability to process my emotions.
Her written material is religious but her Instagram and videos and podcast are NOT. They are incredible resources for everyone. Highly recommend.

Real corner was turned when I read "The God-Shaped Brain" by Dr. Timothy Jennings. Mind blown, opened, and speechless. Also offers online resources.

Andrew Farley is a good resource for religious-based trauma.

In general, I recommend the book "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk to give insight and dig deeper into the difference between all these therapies. Bc of COVID I haven't been able to find a therapist, and it's been unspeakably difficult to be open and observant as my OWN THERAPIST. Some days I thought I was making myself insane. But I'm coming through. Using guidance from this book and the others I mentioned helped me craft an intense and personal therapy for myself.

The Holistic Psychologist, Nicole LePera, offers free education on trauma healing on Instagram and YouTube, is releasing a book soon, and a podcast. Highly highly highly recommend. Just following IG gives me so much to process and heal.

I know others helped immensely by Brene Brown, Joe Dispenza, Eckhart Tolle, Peter Levine, Lissa Rankin, Kelly Brogan, just to drop a few names for consideration and exploration.

All that to say: the mental aspect of Lyme must be addressed to heal. Start with C-PTSD, but you might find your trauma began waaaay before Lyme disease and also needs to be dealt with.

Find a holistic, trauma-informed, or chronic-illness informed therapist of you can. Not easy, and I personally have a trauma of medical professionals so I haven't been able to do this. However, it is possible to do therapy by yourself. Not for everyone, but those insightful and honest and willing to take risks and educate themselves... and do a ton of hard work. Give yourself space to feel all sorts of nasty things. I still needed an extremely patient spouse and TCM doctor to listen to me process my thoughts on a regular basis. Cant say I did it "alone" but my entire therapy was self-guided and self-supervised. If you are a person of faith, do not underestimate the power of your honesty, openness, and prayer. Almost ALL the materials I used for healing were found by chance at thrift stores and free little libraries, and free online sources. I've paid very little and sought out few things specifically - they all just appeared in my life in the right time and right order.

Other resources already mentioned can help guide you, and once you start following some on IG you will get recommended more like it. A rare perk of social algorithms spying on your activity!

Keep going. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep knocking.
Posted 1/25/2021 2:34 PM (GMT 0)
BabsBunny,

Thank you for that detailed and insightful post. I will check into those resources.
Posted 1/26/2021 5:19 AM (GMT 0)
I'm so glad other people are asking about this too--I've been wondering about these things myself! There's also something called The Emotion Code which I've used on myself and on animals. It seems woo-woo, and possibly is pure placebo, but it does help. And hey, even if it is placebo help, it's still help nonetheless.

I'm also in the middle of reading Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn and following along with a free MBSR (mindful-based stress reduction) course I found online. It's designed for people with chronic stress, pain, and/or illness. My aunt used it to help her get through her cancer diagnosis, twice, and I'm hoping it can help me come to terms with my illness and allow me to get through it in a kinder, more gentle way. I currently am full of mood swings, rage, shame, and self-judging and would love to let that go. I'm wondering if mindfulness, EFT, etc. would help me get through the intensity a little easier...

Please keep posting updates of how your therapies turn out!
Posted 3/15/2022 5:19 AM (GMT 0)
Saralei
Do you have an EMDR specialist that you recommend that does telehealth and has experience treating adolescents with P/P/Bartonella?
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