How Does EMDR Help You Heal from Trauma?
Taking power away from painful memories
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a mouthful, but it has proven to be an effective way to heal from trauma.
Traumatic memories, experiences, and thoughts from the past can haunt you, shame you, and intrude into the present. EMDR changes the way those memories are stored in the brain. This process reduces the distressing side effects of trauma, including flashbacks, nightmares, and panic attacks, while allowing you to feel calm and empowered as you go about your daily life.
In this next episode of our ongoing series, Surviving and Thriving After Trauma, Austin sits down with Dr. Mark Pfuetze, an EMDR trained therapist and Covenant Seminary professor, to understand more about:
How trauma affects your brain and body
How EMDR works to repair those effects
The ‘theological piece’ of trauma
What to look for in an EMDR therapist
Austin’s Conversation with Mark
Austin: Thank you for joining us today, Mark! Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
Mark: I’ve been at Covenant Seminary as a professor in the counseling program for over 10 years. My wife and I met here – she’s a counselor for a middle school. We have three kids: a freshman in college, a junior in high school, and an eighth grader - girl, boy, girl.
Austin: I’m so glad I had you as my supervisor when I was completing my degree. Your efforts to teach and guide budding counselors like me make such a difference in God’s kingdom, so thank you! Do you use your counseling expertise in other ways?
Mark: I also counsel in private practice - primarily trauma work using techniques like EMDR, which we’re talking about today, and IFS (Internal Family Systems). Also, I helped develop Global Counseling Network, which is an online counseling center that we first began about nine years ago to reach missionaries who were out in the field that couldn't get access to counseling.
Austin: Here at The Crossing we often refer people to Global Counseling Network if they need specialized help that we can’t offer. So if you’re looking for Christian-based online telehealth, we highly recommend GCN and we’ll link to it below.
How did you end up at Covenant, and what led you to supervise and teach other counselors?
Mark: I grew up in Kansas City and got a history degree at the University of Kansas. I also played in a band there, and I wanted to continue doing music. So I went to Berklee College of Music in Boston. I was planning on heading to Hollywood to be a sound engineer for film and video. But I heard that Campus Crusade had the gospel of Luke on film, called the Jesus Film Project. They were working to translate it into different dialects, so I decided to travel the world, share the gospel, and record the film in dialects in various parts of the world.
From 1996-99, I traveled to 25 different countries. During that time I experienced depression and panic attacks. I began going to counseling for those issues and found real healing in a counseling setting. The Lord put a passion on my heart for counseling and I got my master’s in counseling and then an MDiv. I came to Covenant as a PhD intern, and EMDR was starting to grow as a therapeutic treatment for trauma.
Austin: That’s the perfect place for me to jump in here, because what I’d like to do for the rest of our time together is ask you some questions about trauma, discuss EMDR as a way to heal from trauma, and end by talking about the theological piece of trauma.
To start, what would you say is a good definition for trauma?
Mark: Trauma is our body’s normal response to an abnormal event. Whether it’s one event or a series of events, our brain views it as a threatening situation. The way we perceive the event has ongoing adverse effects on our mental, social, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
We speak of big-T trauma and small-t trauma. Big-T is more of a shocking, one-time event – like being in a car accident. Small-t can also be very harmful, but it’s not a one-time thing. It’s ongoing. For me, having a speech impediment created small-t traumatic events where I would have to speak in front of others and not be able to get the words out. Sometimes I was made fun of, and there was a lot of shame in that.
Austin: Can you go even deeper into the effects of the small-t trauma on you?
Mark: Fortunately, I had wonderful parents and supportive friends. That mitigated what could have been much worse. But there were many times where I was in situations where I couldn’t speak, couldn’t get the words out for 20 seconds or more. And people would flinch or look at me oddly, and I would pick up their subtle body language even if they didn’t say anything about it.
I began to hold a core belief in myself: “I'm an idiot.” And that's how I saw myself, even though it wasn't true. Trauma embeds beliefs in us that aren’t true, but they carry a lot of power and affect us deeply.
When trauma is embedded in our bodies, it raises our sensitivity to situations that feel similar to the past. For example, after I got married, if I said something to my wife and she disagreed with me or clarified what I was saying, I would blow up at her because it reminded me of the things I had experienced growing up - even though she was not calling me an idiot or mocking me.
Sometimes we can challenge false beliefs on our own, but other times, when they are held deeply in our bodies, we need therapies like EMDR to help us process our past trauma.
Sometimes we can challenge false beliefs on our own, but other times, when they are held deeply in our bodies, we need therapies like EMDR to help us process our past trauma.
Austin: Since you brought up EMDR, can you give us a description of what that is and how you’ve seen it help with healing from trauma?
Mark: EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. It began in a weird way. Psychologist Francine Shapiro was working on her PhD in 1987. One day she was walking in a park and thinking about sad things, and as she walked, her sadness started to go away. She noticed that while she was walking, her eye movements were going right, left, right, left. When her eyes moved back and forth, her mind moved away from negative thoughts and feelings.
She began to practice it with her peers and then her clients – they would follow her finger back and forth, left, right, left, right, while they focused on something sad or upsetting. It worked for them too. Then she began to research it and tried it with Vietnam veterans. She found that it helped them process memories and heal from trauma.
Austin: Do you know why or how EMDR works?
Mark: The current theory is that EMDR is similar to REM sleep. When we’re in REM sleep, our eyes are moving back and forth even though we’re asleep. Our brain is processing what’s gone on during the day – literally filtering and cleaning out our memories.
EMDR mimics the REM sleep process and takes memories that register a 9 or 10 on the distress scale and moves them to a place of registering a 1 or a 2. We don’t forget what happened, but that memory doesn’t have power over us anymore and doesn’t intrude into the present.
Austin: I’ve heard you share an illustration that explains this process – and it’s about beach balls!
Mark: When someone is working on issues from the past, it’s like beach balls in a pool. Each of the beach balls is a traumatic memory. We try to push them down under the surface, because they’re painful to think about. But if we don’t process them, they will just come right back up again. EMDR is essentially “popping the beach ball” so it can float to the other end of the pool and not bother us anymore.
EMDR helps us focus on the unprocessed memory as well as the belief system and emotions that are stored in the body because of the trauma.
Austin: I love that explanation. It’s not some weird mystical process. It's not like you're sitting across from somebody in wizard robes with wands and a cauldron.
Mark: Yes, it’s not magic - EMDR uses the brain's natural capacity for healing. God has given us the ability to heal in and through some overwhelming traumatic situations.
Austin: Can you talk about the theological piece of this? Where and how does the Bible talk about trauma?
Mark: Trauma is found throughout the Bible. If you put the Bible on film, a lot of it would be traumatizing to watch! There is a lot going on the spiritual world that we don’t see. And there’s the brokenness of the natural world. When God created the world, it was perfect, but after the fall, sin entered the world.
Sometimes as counselors and pastors, we focus a lot on individual sin – the personal sins of ourselves and others. And that is important, but we might not see that sin is bigger than that. It affected the whole world. So trauma can come from the actions of others but also through nature – like the fires in LA which are happening right now. We experience all kinds of trauma. Until Christ returns, we’re in this tension between the now and the not yet.
As counselors we have to wrestle personally with brokenness in order to help our clients lament and wrestle with it. It’s hard to trust God in the midst of real pain. So having that in mind is crucial as we do trauma or counseling work.
Austin: I think EMDR and other types of therapy are ‘common grace’ gifts that God has given us to be able to heal, not 100% until heaven, but to be able to manage some of these overwhelming circumstances. I'm thankful for that.
One last question – what advice do you have for people who are thinking about trying EMDR?
Mark: I'm a professor of graduate students, and many of them want to get EMDR training after they graduate. I tell them to wait a couple of years and develop their counseling skills first – their ability to be with people, listen well, and not get overwhelmed with other people’s trauma.
EMDR can be really powerful, and can pull somebody back to very painful, overwhelming memories. The therapist has to be able to handle that. Like a surgeon’s scalpel, it can heal or it can cause harm. So find someone with experience, both as a therapist and with EMDR as a therapeutic technique.
Austin: I am so thankful that you were with us today! There is always hope for us to grow and heal from hardships and traumas. Thank you for sharing about this technique and walking with people in pain and suffering. We are thankful that this is not our final hope, but we will have true hope when Jesus returns, and all will be made new.
To hear Austin’s entire conversation with Mark, listen on your favorite podcast player:
Resources
Online Christian Counseling Resource: Global Counseling Network
If you have a question for Dr. Pfuetze you can email him at: Mark.Pfuetze@covenantseminary.edu