Hey everyone! Have you heard about EMDR and were wondering what it is or how it might be able to help you? In this episode I interview Jeremy Fox of Fox EMDR. Jeremy is a totally badass up and coming therapist who specializes in EMDR trauma treatment. In this episode learn the 10 things Jeremy loves about EMDR and listen to him dispell some common myths about EMDR.
Jeremy remembers watching the Matrix for the first time and observing how seamlessly the characters entered and exited the Matrix itself, which was a world of perception and sensation, devoid of any reality or time orientation. Wherever a telephone was present, Morpheus, Neo or Trinity could "jack in," attuning to the Matrix through its distinct signal. It didn't matter the venue used to enter the Matrix, as long as the signal was acquired and maintained.
The Matrix, with its convincing falsification of reality, serves as a superb metaphor for trauma itself: a set of sensory experiences which represent a bygone era, accurate at the time of encoding, but unhelpful and even damaging to present functioning.
With this in mind, treating trauma via Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is similar to entering the Matrix, as only the "signal" of trauma (somatic/sensory memory) is necessary, for "locking on" and desensitizing traumatic experience. Whether a memory assumes the form of a sight, sound, smell, taste, or tactile recollection, the floatback ("think back to original memory") or affect scan ("feel/sense back to original memory") EMDR exercises may "lock on" to specific traumatic experiences, allowing the EMDR standard protocol to desensitize and reprocess them (Hensley, 2016, p. 204-205).
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Just as a professional runner's exit from the Matrix proved sudden and serendipitous, within the Animatrix film, Dr. Francine Shapiro's discovery of EMDR proved similarly spontaneous. In the Animatrix (a supplemental animated movie to the core Matrix trilogy), a sprinting athlete strides with such force and speed that he strains the Matrix program, awakening in the real world. In 1987, Dr. Francine Shapiro inadvertently recognized that, as she walked in a park, thinking of emotionally distressing material, her eyes spontaneously moved in a saccadic (left and right) pattern, which significantly decreased her distress (Hensley, 2016). With that fateful event, Shapiro's journey toward systematizing EMDR began.
Across Jeremy's 4 years of experience with EMDR, first as a basic-trained clinician, and now as an EMDR-certified therapist, he has enjoyed the distinct honor of observing clients with a multitude of clinical disorders and syndromes overcome their traumatic memories and accomplish new goals once thought impossible. Next, he shares 8 attributes of EMDR that he personally finds inspiring and exciting, followed by 5 misconceptions.
Tune in and listen to the full interview. You will be glad you did!
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