#emdr therapy

[aristotlencheese]

Literally no one is talking about how Mcr performing Sleep in Seattle included blue and red flashing lights in a specific patterns during the song. Baby girls, those lights are EMDR. Mcr literally EMDR’d us.

(EMDR is a PTSD treatment.)

[binabadaboom]

See, in the mental health industry, I am what they call a cash cow

[ladyonyxsapphire]

Moots, I had my first EMDR session and holy crap.

I also watched 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

The ending nearly made me cry. I had to fight from screaming with glee.

Nia Da Costa did the damn thing.

[thelys99]

In EMDR therapy you choose a loving figure and protecting figure. I chose these two, and made a little something something on my computer. Lovi

(For the life of me I cannot remember who I got this sticker from. If you recognize it please let me know and I’ll tag you!!!)

EDIT: sticker art by @/himeluune ... thanks so much for them!

[girlbeneaththesmiles]

Down to the Bone

I will rip myself apart

Down to the bone

Again

And again

I'll regrow the flesh and sinew

And sew it all back together

Over

And over

Until my heart can finally beat

Without bleeding out

[ryleebread]

Shoutout to all the girls who’s sexu@l assault doesn’t look like the stereotype of being held at knife point by a stranger in a dark alleyway. It doesn’t matter if your relationship with your assaulter is complicated instead of entirely negative. It doesn’t matter if you can’t or don’t want to seek justice. It doesn’t matter if you still struggle to admit what happened. You can fell disgusted by yourself, the situation, the reactions you anxiously anticipate, but you can say it. You were sexu@lly assaulted.

You are a survivor. I’m saying it because I need to hear it too. I am a survivor. I don’t ever want to be afraid of telling the truth about my past.

[amartacorner]

DCI Morck and therapy

A few remarks regarding therapy in Dept Q. First of all, I think it is a good thing that the police mandate therapy sessions for officers involved in shootings. After one goes through such trauma, support is necessary. Second, I am not talking here about some of the things Rachel did in the sessions (not everything seems ehm ‘traditional’), and, of course, this is a TV series, not a psychology course.

Nevertheless, I would like to state the obvious, namely that there are different types of therapy, and although talking about your experiences might initially be helpful, talk therapy alone most probably will not be sufficient. Trauma is stored in the BODY, and it needs to be released through the body. Those tennis balls might be a good starting point, but pushing down your anger and grief is not the way. It blows up in unexpected places and moments, as we see repeatedly with Carl.

There are many therapies that go beyond traditional talk therapy. They include EMDR, IFS, Somatic Experiencing and other somatic modalities, Janina Fisher’s TIST, ketamine assisted, polyvagal and others. I don’t know what’s in the original books, but I am hoping something of the following or similar comes up in Season 2:

Carl decides to go to a kickboxing training and one day just punches a bag with rage until he collapses,

Or he visits Akram at home and one of his daughters shows Carl a favourite cat video and the cuteness overload (from the cat and the daughters) just gets him into uncontrollable sobs,

Or he finds a lost kid in the street and helping the kid find his mom triggers a childhood memory that, again, gets him sobbing, maybe later that night in the shower,

Or he investigates a new case in which a trauma therapist disappears, and so Carl needs to learn in detail about that person’s work and thus he finds out about a modality that helps him.

Anyway, something that gets a wee bit of the pain he is carrying out of his tortured body. He needs that. And potentially someone watching also needs to know that they can release (some of) their pain and just breathe. Wounds CAN be healed, but they need to be cleaned first. Carl has pain not just from Leith Park, but also from his previous cases, his marriage, possibly his other relationships, and his childhood. Oh, and please may he go through this BEFORE he puts his ass into another entangled mess of a romance, whether with Rachel or another woman. To quote the man himself, that would be “fucking hell.”

[crawlinghaze]

This is genuinely what EMDR therapy feels like to me: