“Come on, Rachel” I hear a voice deep inside of me whisper…” You’ve got this. You can do this. Pull yourself together. You know human beings have an innate capacity for forward movement, to create the required connections needed to survive and thrive…So come on already, THRIVE”.
As I’ve reached middle-age (Do we ever truly know what “the middle” is in our lifespan?), I am faced with some unexpected challenges. I have elderly parents who live a twelve-hour flight away, and I am recently divorced, which although (unfortunately) common, brings with it a “quieter” kind of trauma that’s largely invisible to the world; the grief, guilt and shame around that loss has been relentless and causes me to question virtually every facet of my life.
Single parenting young children and teenagers, and the daily struggle around managing work, finances, and household responsibilities, is not for the weak. I find myself avoiding every book and article on Intergenerational Trauma, suspecting that I’ve just perpetuated the cycle.
Add to that being more introverted, the profound loneliness of having no family or close-knit community, and a fair amount of existential anxiety, and life quickly becomes about surviving, not thriving.
Wasn’t I just defending my doctoral dissertation and nursing babies at 3AM?
Wasn’t I just celebrating my eight birthday, unwrapping toys under the Christmas tree, preparing for piano recitals, and getting lost in hours of imaginative play in our backyard?
“Time flies” has never felt so real an expression, as it does now.
Like many living organisms, humans too, are woven into their environments and information processing is part of what connects us all to those environments. By understanding the AIP model to include both the access to adaptive information alongside an experienced, present sense of Self, and other, then we can begin to understand that much of EMDR is focused on attention and attunement.
It is potentially a body-based, information-rich relationship between two human beings. And, for the most part, this is how I experience it when I’m sitting with clients.
As life will have it, the stressors I find myself confronted with have activated significant reflection around my work as an EMDR clinician.
We all know that empathy, compassion, affirmation, presence and intersubjectivity, are the sine qua non of successful psychotherapies (relationships, in general) that help us navigate many things, including our existential angst.
Yet even with these key ingredients, and even when many human beings can adaptively access information within regulated states, experientially (not just abstractly), they can remain in stagnation or worse, deteriorate, for reasons that may or may not be related to lack of available internal or external resources.
“Is this what’s happening to me?”, I wonder, as I observe a few well-resourced clients who seem to be stuck in their lives, and as I watch myself struggle immensely with concepts of health, wellness, resilience, forward movement, being wanted and seen, and loved.
I suppose the potential for healing increases exponentially with resources, but it’s never a guarantee.
As I continue to challenge myself with what it means to live meaningfully, and witness the healing paths of my clients, I have been trying to find more nuanced definitions and understandings within the AIP system and EMDR in general.
I sip my tea, trying to create some semblance of the stories of my life, and I hear the chants of Jewish men engaged in prayer outside my window, the echo of the Muslim call for prayer ricocheting off the mountains, young soldiers practicing in the shooting range, the voices of small children playing in the park, and my own, still voice, distant though audible, wondering how I arrived here, and where I’m headed.
I live in Israel, a country thousands of miles away from family in the U.S., where I still struggle with the culture, the language, and my own shyness around speaking it despite having improved significantly over the years.
Moments of derealisation plague me and I often have “what the hell am I doing here” thoughts, followed by significant guilt, as the culture gap between myself and my kids widens, and I raise proud, strong Israeli children.
This is their home, their language, their culture, the only land they know and love. I hear that still, small voice saying, “This isn’t right, this isn’t supposed to be this way” and I feel trapped in the wrong life scripts.
“Come on, Rachel,” I hear myself saying. “Thrive. You’ve got enough adaptive information in there…take a deep breath and pull yourself together.”
Running and martial arts, two sports that anchor me and teach me to remember to breathe, pace myself, push through discomfort and move freely, help me daily.
Baking homemade breads, nature walks, Jane Austen books, cups of hot tea and drowning in Netflix alongside some creamy chocolate, are usually how I “pull it together”.
Are those resources? I guess so.
Are they resources that can push my life forward in healing ways? I don’t know.
Once again, I find myself contemplating the AIP system, this innate system geared towards health, the one that guides my psychotherapy practice each week as I strive to help each brave person confront difficult memories and reconnect to a more authentic Self.
I’m reminded of every workshop and course I’ve taught, gently encouraging colleagues to ask themselves difficult questions, the same ones I actively avoid, the ones that when given a little space, make us uncomfortable but push us to think and grow.
“Maybe I’m not asking myself enough of those questions”, I wonder…
I had children in my 30’s and 40’s, which means I still have young ones at home who request bedtime stories, eagerly wait for the tooth fairy, and ask me to braid their hair.
For that, I’m grateful; they keep me young and playful, though I’m keenly aware most of my counterparts have young adult children, and some are already grandparents.
I’ve always been sensitive about my age, knowing I’m on a different path, the one less traveled I suppose.
That “different path” has been exceedingly difficult for me to embrace, and Robert Frost’s words have comforted me more than once….”Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by….”.
More recently, perhaps the result of a milestone birthday that both felt like a privilege, but also left me somewhat panicky, I have been wanting to contribute in any way I can to this often upside-down and complicated planet we share.
But how?
With so many voices, it feels like the moment I think my words have value, they are squashed by something else or someone else.
The hierarchy within the modalities we practice, and the seemingly endless stream of acronyms that both enrich but also fracture our field, make it so easy to get lost, overwhelmed, feel inferior, and I wonder if there’s any room for me at all.
I’m reminded of Jim Carry’s speech in which he jokingly said that he’d finally be enough if he was a three-time golden globe winner, alluding to the never-ending challenges around self-worth and what constitutes “good enough”.
I often felt I had a story to tell, something to share, wisdom to impart, and perhaps my students, clients, supervisees and colleagues would say I already have.
Sure, I got lucky in graduate school with a few published books on trauma for kids, and more recently created a playlist of some rather silly EMDR songs that elicited giggles around the globe, but for the most part, I’ve practiced the art and science of this profession quietly and I hope, humbly, mostly in a small room in an office building in Jerusalem, holding the hands of those suffering with a variety of life injuries, some more wounded than others.
And maybe…just maybe…that, in and of itself, is enough in this profession.
Had I been braver to make certain decisions in my life that better reflected my authenticity, had I been able to confront my demons back in graduate school, where I was earning my doctorate but also keeping my injuries largely out of conscious awareness, perhaps I would have been able to contribute more. Perhaps I’d be a very different person today.
Alas, some ships sail, and if we are lucky, we learn to value the smaller boats which, in some cases, can offer us more precious cargo, and sturdy sailing, than the ships we missed.
I was just shy of 14 years old when I converted to Orthodox Judaism, certainly not an ideal time to make life-changing, irreversible decisions that alter the entire trajectory of one’s life and essentially hijack what should have been a normal, adolescent identity development.
More than three decades later, I still find myself struggling, straddling two worlds, embracing neither, living somewhere in an uncomfortable space that doesn’t quite feel meaningful.
Unlike many converts, my process was neither an intellectual journey full of excitement, questions and studying, nor an emotional one full of ups and downs, motivation and self-doubt.
Rather, my conversion to Judaism was mostly a way to cope under a set of very painful family circumstances in which, likely a result of birth order, I got caught in the middle.
With dark hair and eyes, I look Jewish, have the name “Rachel”, and have multiple family members who are observant Jews.
So, I certainly turn heads when I say I’m a convert.
Over the years, I have walked many walks within Orthodox circles, yet have felt spiritually inferior, injured, a fraud, ashamed, especially in those early years as an awkward adolescent who had lost virtually everything familiar overnight…my home, friends, community, holidays, extended family, school, my Sicilian mother’s food, my fashion sense, my identity as a musician, my voice.
Now, thirty-five years later, as I watch my children living their spiritual lives one way, and me, another way, I’m both envious and grateful that at least they have some aspect of their identities that is solid and unshakeable, that they have a sense of belonging, of being anchored in a family, a culture, an identity.
Statistics were against me to achieve much of anything in life given the depth of the trauma I experienced and my own highly sensitive nature. The ambivalence around being transparent both with myself and others has permeated my life.
I’m still not sure how I went on to achieve higher degrees, author books or create any sense of an organised sense of Self. But I suppose to be human is to experience moments of weakness, and pain, sometimes extreme, to feel doubt and insecurity, and when we are lucky, to embark on a quest to belong, and to be seen.
Being a convert has required strength and faith, both of which continue to waver, as I suppose it does for those born Jewish, and probably for most human beings.
It’s not a secret that many therapists enter the profession due to their own difficult histories and healing processes.
I’m obviously no exception, though I question if that was my truest calling in life.
Probably not. I have generally kept the conflict around my identity struggles private, though those closest to me have witnessed the pain, and held me close as streams of tears turned into rivers, then oceans, and seas of endless conflict.
In my work as a psychologist, I have tremendous respect and empathy for those struggling with spiritual conflict and a sense of disconnection from Self which, I believe, to one degree or another, is the consequence of all traumata.
It goes without saying that we owe a great deal to Carl Rogers and many others for attuning us to the basics of human connection in (and out of) psychotherapy around empathy, genuineness, and unconditional positive regard.
My earliest training was psychodynamic, so creating an intersubjective space within EMDR has always been intuitive to me. I have always understood it as an attachment-informed psychotherapy, a way of asking what our clients’ need from the AIP system, and how we can create a joint, human space that supports that.
Assuming we as clinicians have access to our own adaptive information and resources, the answer is often an integrative one where we pull from our theoretical backgrounds, our clinical intuition and our own wisdom, helping clients gain awareness to the full realm of their existence, while bridging that information with their present-day lives.
When we see our clients as human beings, without professing to own the truth about their realities, without “doing” EMDR but interactively engaged in a dynamic exchange of information processing, we create space for the potential for change and begin to understand that “failure” in EMDR work may be an expression of a self-protective process of either client or therapist, an impasse in the relational dynamic; it does not have to mean the wrong protocol, an interweave that flopped and most certainly not “client resistance”.
There are moments when clients, just like us, need both “to be”, and “in relation with”, to just breathe the same air the therapist (or trusted other) is breathing, to be in the therapist’s presence, and *that* becomes the ultimate resource, provided the therapist, too, can remain in a connected, relational AIP system, unafraid to touch his or her own vulnerabilities, something which I’ve become less, not more, certain I’m skilled at, as I navigate this difficult season in my life.
Like others I, too, have longed for the “magic” of EMDR to take my pain away.
Highly sensitive people feel things more intensely, the positive and the negative. I will never apologise for that; it means I experience pain deeply, but I also experience joy and love deeply.
My sensitivities are a gift that allow me to attune to relational systems in profound ways, that let me notice things that perhaps others don’t.
So yes, I might cry more, cry harder, and require more protection from social media and news outlets, but maybe my sensitivities are also resources.
Maybe they are for you, too.
Maybe we all lose our breath, maybe we all feel confused, terrified, anxious, and worry about tomorrow.
Maybe we all wonder if we are doing enough, loving enough, laughing enough, exercising enough, in relationship enough, contributing enough, “being” enough.
I’ve lived enough to know that no single therapy has a monopoly on truth. Seeing ourselves in all our fullness, resilience and fragility, maintaining motivation, hope and dual attention, is the essence of what will allow the potential for information processing both in and out of therapy.
While EMDR is a robust treatment and offers both a theoretical and practical explanation for how change and growth occur in human beings, it is also wise to remember that there is still much we don’t know and therefore approaching all aspects of human healing with a sense of humility and of acknowledging there is still much to be understood, is wise.
I suspect this is what Shapiro, at least in part, meant when she emphasised a “non-evaluative stance”.
As clinicians treating a range of wounding across the lifespan, having respect for individual levels of resourcefulness, resilience, and maintaining respect for the fear that comes with transitions and change, perhaps reminding ourselves of our own difficult journeys, is essential.
Given how much we emphasise the therapeutic alliance as central to all psychotherapy, wouldn’t it be an interesting addition to Part 1 EMDR trainings if students were asked to engage in an experiential exercise applying the eight phases of EMDR to their lives, as preparation and awareness in a larger process of becoming, and of coming into themselves as clinicians?
I think back to my EMDR training and how I might have answered the following questions:
Phase 1: If this is the starting point, what information am I gathering about myself, to conceptualise my life, and to inquire what still needs reprocessing. Can I be a non-judgmental, supportive friend to myself (self-compassion), and honor what I need? What if my past has become my present, and can I invite myself to make connections between symptoms that still crop up for me as earlier events that are still easily activated?
Phase 2: What are the things in my life I need to live the best version of myself that I can? Are my current resources enough or can things be added, tweaked, strengthened? How am I defining resources in my life?
Phase 3-6: What is the baseline measurement of my regulatory abilities related to the things in my life I’m struggling with? Can I assign meaning to those experiences and use them to move forward in productive ways, can I shift emotional responses and gain insights, re-write the scripts to more adaptive ones and release the tension in my body?
Phase 7: Can I accept that at times, things may not be perfect, that things may at times feel very incomplete and insufficient resolution doesn’t mean stagnation, but is an opportunity for further development?
Phase 8: Reevaluation: Can I sustain the ways I’m learning and growing and if not, what needs to be revisited?
As my musings conclude, thank you, dear reader, for sitting together with me.
I suppose we would do well to remind ourselves that life is complex, and that each of our, and our clients’ historical and present selves, are layered with meaning, often laced with an unnamed grief and loss, and cannot neatly fit into a single theory, or a single psychological narrative, no matter how alluring it may be to unify the process of growth and change.
Just as in EMDR work, lines are rarely straight and utilising available resources, whether those resources be internal, such as character traits of optimism, motivation and perseverance, a pastime, hobby or talent that brings passion and joy, supportive positive relationships, or financial stability, resources don’t always correlate to a completed healing process but the potential for one.
There are those life processes, often unexpected ones, that simply take longer to reach adaptation, and we’d do best to speak from our heart to our clients’ hearts, trusting the intuition of both them and us, gently and patiently.
There are moments when all the resources in the world, even when readily accessed, may not be enough during a particular period to thrust information processing forward in a way that is life changing. AND. THAT’S. OK.
As EMDR clinicians, whether we float back, flash forward, EMDR-2.0 the hell out it, or anywhere in between, I wonder if we need to get close, right up close, and let ourselves be touched, activated, on the edge of our own windows of tolerance.
When we can be brave enough to do that, in a connected AIP system, an intersubjective space that allows us to grow as human beings in relationship to ourselves and our clients, we make room to notice that…and notice us.
Maybe that’s the magic?
In the meantime, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And miles to go before I sleep.”
“Come on, Rachel….Thrive”.
-Dr. Rachel Rashkin
Shootpsychology@gmail.com