EMDR

"Both the left and right hemisphere may be conscious simultaneously in different, even mutually conflicting, mental experiences that run along in parallel." --Neuroscientist William Wolcott Sperry

I tried a kind of therapy called Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) today.

EMDR tries to address whatever we get "stuck" on inside--those things we can't stop ruminating about, or memories that haunt us, or emotional blockages--through the body as well as the mind. As the theory goes, entering those difficult feelings/images while juxtaposing physical stimulation can help to dislodge them, so they can be reprocessed.

I was pretty skeptical. The jury is still out in the mental health world about EMDR. But I was back in my desperation stage of insomnia, and I'm lucky enough to have a therapist who's trained in EMDR. She wasn't sure it would work for me, either.

It was not what I expected. I got surprisingly emotional. (Course I tend to do that on three hours of sleep--but maybe that made me especially open to EMDR.) I could feel that it unleashed feelings for me in a visceral way. It was like it got to things in my gut that I don't reach through my thoughts. It was altogether cathartic and uncomfortable and involuntary.

I saw more clearly that all the parts of my self are equally real: the part of me that has it together, and the part of me that does not. I tapped into a vat of emotion that runs alongside me as I go through my daily life attending to other things. I may at once think myself out of something and be subject to it.