Today I attended my first counseling appointment with the EMDR therapist. He patiently taught me all about it, how it stimulates both sides of the brain alternately to process past emotions, and it can be done with tappers (little electrodes that vibrate in each hand alternately), or eye movements (I focus on something in his hand as he moves it from side to side), or auditory (I think he said he uses headphones or something like that, so the sound goes in one ear and then in the other back and forth). I also learned about another technique which I can’t remember what it’s called right now. He had it printed out on a card which is still out in the car. I’ll get it in the a.m. or maybe later tonight. Anyway, it starts out tapping the side of your own hand (with your other hand) and saying, “even though I feel (fill in the blank), I completely accept myself as I am (or if that doesn’t feel honest or true, then substitute “Jesus accepts me just as I am), and then you repeat the phrase about how you are feeling while tapping various other places on your body. At the end of the tapping you take a deep breath and let it out and assess how you are feeling/what you are thinking after going through the tapping series. So, in other words, you might start out saying, “Even though I feel overwhelmed right now, I completely accept myself. I’m feeling overwhelmed (tapping in new place), I’m feeling overwhelmed. (new place) my feelings are too intense right now for me to sort out. (tap, tap, tap, tap.) all the way through each place on the body that the tapping is done. Then a deep breath and assessment. I might notice that while I was tapping a new thought or feeling (which could be emotional or physical) comes to my awareness; so I start over inserting the new thought or feeling while going through the whole tapping routine again. You keep doing this until you reach a calm. I learned that others of me have been using these techniques with a lot of success, and I can do the second one at home or wherever I happen to be when I feel the need to sort my thoughts and feelings out. We did the EMDR using the tappers to process a memory which he had heard about in a more general sense by other personalities, but I was the first one to talk about the details. I was kind of surprised about that. It was a very significant thing that happened during the first year of my first marriage. The EMDR pulled out some real intense feelings that I’ve been struggling with recently because I’ve been writing about it for the book. I think it was helpful and healing to do it. Then we used the other technique to process some confusing feelings I have towards my dad stemming from that same time period. I think it was helpful, too.

The rest of the day was full. I spent some time on the phone with one daughter and also with one brother. I also spent some time visiting another daughter and some of our grandchildren. It was late by the time I got home, so it’s just been a short time that I’ve been able to reflect back to the session with the therapist and all that I learned/did this a.m. Guess it’s time to go find that card in the car and do some more tapping.