“Emotional knots can be undone through EMDR therapy”

Anabel Gonzalez She is a trainer in EMDR therapy, a psychotherapy that allows addressing the deepest emotional wounds and post-traumatic stress. She has published the work ˝Scars do not hurt ”(Ed. Planeta) in which explains how emotional knots can be undone through EMDR therapy.

“Emotional wounds are not seen and that is why we believe that we can do magic to heal them, but a process is always necessary. On an emotional level, as with physical injuries, our nervous system has mechanisms to heal us, which have their times. If we want to skip stages and speed up the process to start working immediately as if nothing had happened, we will leave things unresolved that, perhaps years later, when faced with a less significant situation, will appear. Then everything will fall on top of us ”, warns Anabel González.

–How does EMDR help to heal emotional wounds?
–EMDR is a therapy to treat trauma recognized by the WHO and numerous international clinical guidelines, in which, through a set of procedures, we work on the memories and defenses that we raise in the face of the pain experienced. One ingredient in this therapy is somewhat atypical and has given rise to a great deal of research.

It has been seen that certain eye movements or other forms of alternating brain stimulation have an effect on disturbing memories, decreasing their intensity and helping to assimilate them. However, the most complex part of EMDR is not how it is applied, but finding which memories are important to work on, this is what can be laborious. It is not always easy to locate the root of the problem that does not let us evolve.

– Can we be influenced by deep emotional wounds without knowing it?
–Yes, in fact, the deeper the trauma, the easier it is for the person to be unaware of it. If the experience was overwhelming, emotional anesthesia occurs, memories may be blocked and the mind may not have access to what happened. However, the emotions that all of this generated in us stay inside, even if we don’t find out… Thus, the people with the most serious injuries are the ones who can tell us the least where the root of the problem is.

If we think of the faces of child soldiers we can understand this well. Their brain can’t process all the horror they experienced and they disconnect emotionally, acting as if nothing happened. Some studies indicate that these children do not feel sadness or fear in a normal way because there are emotions related to vulnerability that their brain can no longer identify. They cannot allow themselves to feel them because of the reality that they have had to live.

–To this difficulty in accessing the root of the wound is added the fear of facing it in therapy, right?
–I am precisely working on a book on conversion disorder, which is a bodily manifestation of emotional problems. People who suffer from it do not communicate emotionally, and they also do not like the idea that their physical problems have an emotional root. So they go from doctor to doctor trying to find the origin of their pathology and it is difficult for them to get involved in a psychotherapeutic process, which is what they really need.

These people are often held responsible for what happens to them, but the degree to which their symptoms can be modified at will is little or none. However, the way to treat it is through psychotherapy, and this requires the patient to participate with us in the treatment, but their problem makes it difficult for them to become aware and work to solve it. They are complicated knots to undo.

– Do traumas have an impact on the relationships we maintain with others?
–A trauma, in a broad sense, is actually an unresolved life experience. Its effects can be seen through the physical problems we suffer, the emotional problems we get stuck in, or the difficulties in relationships. What can traumatize people the most is another human being, and when this happens, patterns are generated that can lead us to have the same type of problem with those around us over and over again.

We ask ourselves: “why do I always end up here?”, and we don’t find an answer, because that answer is further back in our history. This is not always easy to see for yourself, and it would seem logical that if you have crashed four times in the same way, the fifth time you say to yourself: “I am going to ask for help so that someone can help me see what I cannot see” . However, people are very complicated.

For example, sometimes people come to therapy who are determined to show that nothing is wrong with them. And it is that we are building very complicated traps to untangle. If we are facing a recurring problem, whether of a physical, relational or emotional origin, it is good to ask for help and walk that path patiently for a while.

Patience is important because what we have been dragging for years cannot be solved in two days of treatment. It is also essential to face our problems and share them with the therapist, to function as a team, this is how you can really take advantage of it.

–Isn’t EMDR a quick therapy?
–If we compare it with exposure therapy –a therapy also used for traumatic experiences– EMDR is faster to apply. But both techniques require an integration of experience, which ends up taking time.

The procedure is different. In EMDR it is connected with the memory and an associative process begins, which is activated by eye movements. The brain begins to go from one place to another and connect with various elements (memories, emotions, sensations, many times different from the initial memory). The initial memory is returned from time to time, very briefly, like three or four times in a session. This is very different from exposure therapy, in which the person will be in contact with the traumatic memory and the emotions associated with it for long periods, until they become habituated to it, trying to stay as much in contact with the memory as possible. .

Generally, the person will repeat the process several times on their own, until the effect is achieved. In EMDR, during most of the session the person is making associations with other things, and finally the discomfort that the initial memory produced decreases and becomes more integrated with the rest of what they have experienced, but they will not repeat the process at home. So the total time spent working with the memory is lower with EMDR, although both therapies are effective and recommended.

Now, if a person starts psychotherapy, the problem usually does not have to do only with a memory. Many times you see different experiences that combine to give rise to a problem. The truth is that by helping the person to make connections, with EMDR you begin to work at a deeper level, which in the end also takes time… There are patients who come expecting to heal the damage of an entire life, sometimes very complicated, in a few sessions, and this is not realistic.

–Of the many cases that you narrate in the book, which one would you highlight?
–Of the cases that I tell in scars don’t hurt (Ed. Planet) there are some that I keep more in my memory, perhaps because of what they taught me. I remember a woman, who was the first patient with a psychotic condition that I treated with EMDR, and who showed me that in these cases, working on trauma can contribute a lot.

Another of the first cases I dealt with was a girl. We often work with children with drawings, and the changes with therapy can be seen very graphically in them… The girl had suffered a significant loss and in the EMDR session her The brain was making associations spontaneously, it was healing itself with almost no intervention on my part: it found the solution within.

What I have seen with this therapy is that many times the person understands what is happening to them and knows what they would have to do to heal, but they suffer a block on another level that does not allow them to carry it out. The effect that is seen with EMDR is to unblock, like undoing some knots that are emotional, sometimes in the body, and that are not easy to modify from consciousness and will.

–How to know which memories are traumatic?
–There are experiences in our history that remain unintegrated, unassimilated. We know this because, if we look back and think about those moments, they are not emotionally neutral, but still make us feel bad.

For a memory to be processed, it must produce the same sensation as thinking, for example, of a plant. Any old memory that still arouses an emotion in us would be an unresolved memory. Sometimes this seems strange to us and we think: “If what happened was very serious, how could it not hurt me?”

But really pain is a signal that only makes sense while the problem is active. Remembering that we have collided with the corner of the table does not hurt us. Let’s just remember it. In fact, if it hurts us to think about it, we tend to protect ourselves worse from future damage.

What is the difference between a trauma that happens in adulthood and one that happens in childhood?
–In childhood, which is when our brain is developing, we are more vulnerable, and, in addition, it is often when the foundations of beliefs or ways of functioning that we will carry with us throughout our lives are laid.

In fact, many times we see how in people who suffer trauma in adulthood, the present situation is connected with unresolved childhood experiences, which worsen or increase the impact of what is happening.

For example, let’s imagine that I had a bicycle accident as a child, I had a good scare and my mother was very nervous. Then I have another adult accident. My brain connects these two episodes, many times without my realizing it, and since the first one is not entirely neutral, the current event will also trigger the emotions that were left unprocessed then.

This also explains why the same situation affects some people more than others.

When we had a serious train accident in Galicia in 2013, many people had to undergo therapy, regardless of whether they had suffered physical injuries. Of the cases that I treated at that time, none had suffered significant bodily injuries and in each of them the level of involvement was different. One of the most serious cases had been abused as a child, a subject he had tried to deny all his life. That tangle inside him opened like a Pandora’s box with the accident, but he still didn’t want to work on it or look at it, which ended up completely blocking him.

–Is the pandemic also triggering unprocessed emotions?
–Yes, the pandemic is removing us all, but it is always worse when it rains and it pours. For example, people who had previously had painful experiences of loneliness fared worse during lockdown.

This whole situation was a high caliber trigger of previous traumas. We all have experiences we haven’t…