EMDR- flirting with danger, accessing the soul

I have been encouraged, intrigued, amazed, speechless at times about how EMDR seems to access the spiritual realm of a person.  I have experienced this personally in my own EMDR work and through working with clients who have accessed deep spiritual truth and revelation through the EMDR process. I think God may have revealed a bit about that to me tonight.  I’ve been pondering the structural model of dissociation, which states in a very small nutshell of this model that a person who experiences PTSD, had to have dissociated at the time of the trauma, and part of them is re-experiencing the trauma emotionally without all the facts.  A person who re-experiences trauma when triggered, can be triggered by a number of identifiable and unconscious states such as cognitions, social situations, sensory experiences (body sensations, sounds, smells, etc), emotions, words heard or spoken, etc.

People who have suffered trauma often have moments in their lives where they react to situations in a way that they feel detached from their behavior or emotions.  They may become so incensed that they say things they wouldn’t normally say or forget aspects of a confrontation they had with someone who angered them.   A loved one of mine has episodes of this kind of behavior, and I was praying about her one day, and I asked God, “Why does she react that way?”  “How can someone who is a good person most of the time and attempts to live for God get that far gone when she is angry?”  I really felt like God spoke to me and said, “Trauma.”   This word popped into my head unexpectedly the next few times I saw my loved one, and I felt like I understood finally, and instead of being frustrated with her…. I felt empathy.  I pray for her in a whole new way.

As I was praying more about my situation with her and telling my husband about the answer I felt I received from God, He revealed a little more to me.  At point of trauma, minds are vulnerable to lies.  It seems that dissociation is a state of mind that places us at particular risk to psychological problems.  I am proposing that since the Fall, Satan has used whatever means necessary to keep us from God.  And now it seems pretty obvious to me that he would certainly use our only means of communicating with God (OUR BRAINS) against us to inhibit our communication with God and our power through Christ to stop his attacks.  I am not at all saying that a person with psychological issues is possessed or has made some covenant with the devil.  What I am saying is that disease began with the Fall, INCLUDING problems with our minds.  We are all, saved and unbelievers, influenced by good and evil.  Sometimes we are aware of the influence, and sometimes we are not.  We fall prey when we are not aware.  That’s why the Bible clearly states that we should be alert.  We should be praying without ceasing.  That Satan roams about the earth looking for prey. 

When we are traumatized as humans, we are in a weakened, unsafe state.  When we happen to dissociate (a process by which the mind goes to a different place to survive horror of a situation), we are unaware AND in danger, usually physically and psychologically.  The theory behind EMDR is that people who have trouble with trauma once it is over, have come to believe a “negative cognition.”  I call it a lie from Hell to my clients who are inclined to believe there is a God and there is a Satan.  I have noticed, when a person becomes aware of  the Lie, he/she often appearst  o be haunted.  Sometimes they identify it right away as a thought that has been plaguing them for sometime. Sometimes they are caught by surprise, but it is a sense of familiarity with that lie, even if they were not aware of its presence in their thought life.  If disociation is such a endangering state, why wouldn’t Satan use those opportunities to speak lies over one’s life to try to render the person powerless, fearful, a victim to his/her own emotions, and separated from God.

When battling the lie in a powerful way such as EMDR, I believe you engage client and clinician in spiritual warfare because you are engaging Satan and calling him on the lie he spoke over the person’s life at the point of trauma.  When I have been stuck in EMDR, where the person is not budging off the lie he or she has been told and believed, I often begin to pray and see an answer to prayer and a sudden influx of spiritual revalation that debunks the lies they believed just seconds ago.  I’m thinking of these lies as Satan’s CLAIM over the person.  As the therapist goes in to try to dismantle these lies, Satan’s stronghold begins to unravel, and that doesn’t sit well with him.  AS a person “processes” or lets go of those lies, their cognitions automatically become more positive and often quite profoundly spiritual in nature.  I’ve had clients feel for the first time, “I AM WORTHY of love because God loves me.”  “He really loves me.  I can feel it.”  They report feeling lighter, taller, all things associated with being free from bondage.  I once received an image of myself having a heavenly light shining down on me as I envisioned myself living, doing God’s calling for me.

Thinking about EMDR this way has me pondering it anew.  If it is a process that engages battle, perhaps I need to be using all my weapons.  I could definitely be more prayerful about the process and more alert.

Tags: christian counselors, victims of abuse, victims of trauma