Therapist Unplugged
Therapist Unplugged
Exploring EMDR Therapy with Gergana Markov
What if you could navigate the toughest moments of your life without reliving the pain? Join us for an enlightening episode as we welcome Gergana, a seasoned expert in EMDR therapy, who unravels the transformative power of this groundbreaking approach. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) has emerged as a beacon of hope for those grappling with trauma, PTSD, and phobias. Through Gergana's thoughtful insights and personal anecdotes, we uncover how EMDR helps shift perceptions and facilitate profound healing by addressing the roots of past traumas without forcing a re-experience of those events.
For anyone feeling trapped and exhausted by unsuccessful attempts at healing, this episode offers a new perspective. Explore how EMDR empowers individuals to connect the dots of their life stories, releasing pent-up emotions and gaining control over their personal healing journey. We discuss the importance of equipping clients with tools for emotional regulation and distress tolerance, ensuring a supportive environment for growth and change. With dual attention techniques, clients remain anchored in the present while gently revisiting past experiences, clearing emotional roadblocks and reclaiming the life they deserve. Tune in to discover how EMDR could be the key to unlocking a healthier, more autonomous you.
Therapist Unplugged is brought to you by The Montfort Group. Each episode will feature the unplugged views of guests and fellow therapists as we navigate hot topics, therapy trends and the world around us.
*The Montfort Group provides a serene, calming setting where you can feel challenged, supported, and motivated. Our skilled therapists bridge specialized backgrounds and varied philosophies together to create one unified strategy. Rather than steer you away from your own natural abilities, we help you maximize your unique strengths. We do not view a broken history as the end of a story, we see it as an opportunity for a new beginning.
So here we are, ergana, I am so excited to talk with you today about EMDR therapy, because you hear the term spoken quite a bit, but I'm not sure that people really understand what EMDR therapy is, so could you sort of share what it is like? What does EMDR mean? What is it for?
Gergana Markov:Okay, well, thanks for inviting me to chat with you.
Laurie Poole:Oh, absolutely,
Gergana Markov:I'm a big fan of your podcast, so I'm thrilled.
Gergana Markov:But yeah, also, you know I'm a big fan of EMDR too. I really believe in that intervention. So what is EMDR? Okay, so the acronym EMDR stands for eye movement and desensitization and reprocessing, and we'll kind of go into it and talk more about what each one of these means in particular.
Gergana Markov:But, overall, EMDR is a memory-based psychotherapy that is probably one of the most effective and efficient ways to treat trauma.
Laurie Poole:Okay.
Gergana Markov:And in a way, kind of to use the words of the founder of EMDR therapy, it's a way to move the past into the past so we can again dig into it and start breaking it down. Right, do you want me to talk a little bit about?
Laurie Poole:Oh, yeah. I'm just- before we get into EMDR emdr therapy is actually all about and how works, Gergana Gargana, I'm just curious about are there certain types of trauma that are best suited for this form of therapy, or can it be applied to a variety of different scenarios? I'm just thinking for our listeners who may say, oh well, maybe that's something I'd like to explore.
Gergana Markov:Okay, I love that question because EMDR has kind of evolved over the years. It started out with a standard protocol that kind of was most suited for a single traumatic event, right, addressing a single traumatic event.
Gergana Markov:But, over time, kind of the modality has grown and evolved and Francine Shapiro who started it. She also started the EMDR Institute that was dedicated to research around EMDR and how to kind of continue to expand its reach and the way it helps clients. So right now you can use EMDR for acute stress, right, acute traumatic stress, and that's kind of immediately after a traumatic event. Let's say a client is in a car crash or witnesses something very traumatic and within three days and a month of this happening they're noticing that their nervous system gets really overwhelmed. So they can come and we can use EMDR for that. For PTSD, it's one of the kind of most known interventions to treat combat veterans, for example, or any kind of PTSD, when people have witnessed or been exposed in some way to a traumatic event and that kind of continues to impact their lives. And I'm not going to go into all the kind of criteria for diagnosing with PTSD, but it is very effective for that.
Laurie Poole:Okay
Gergana Markov:And it is really effective and it's being used a lot lately in treating CPTSD, which is Complex PTSD, and you kind of know that right, like sometimes clients come in with a very clear idea that they have this traumatic thing they need to process right that's impacting their lives. But a lot of times you and I know we have clients that come in and they present with intense anxiety or some phobias that they can't quite place.
Gergana Markov:High achievers right, who on the surface look like they have it all together but are struggling with this underlying feeling of not being enough. People struggle with relationships, can't keep a job right. There are all these kind of patterns they're noticing in their lives that are not serving them. They seek help for that and they come and present with these signs and symptoms. And as we start digging as therapists and kind of being curious and pulling on threads, we might actually link some of these things to previous traumatic or adverse experiences and EMDR is excellent at addressing those. And in fact it starts with not just kind of treating the trauma that's causing right these dysfunctions later in life, but also being able to identify that there was trauma that is causing all these unwanted patterns.
Laurie Poole:You know to your point. As you know, I have also been doing EMDR therapy and what brought me to it was my phobia of vomiting, and anybody who knows me knows I have a real phobia around that. And as we process the phobia, there was trauma from childhood that surfaced that I never linked to my fear of vomiting. Just on a personal level, I have been amazed at what comes up just in the processing, and we'll talk more about what that looks like.
Laurie Poole:But I've been really fascinated by EMDR therapy from my own personal experience but also for reasons you've just cited in terms of you know with military veterans and others how effective it's been in helping clients work through this without reliving the experience.
Laurie Poole:So I'm so happy we're having this conversation.
Gergana Markov:Yeah, I am too, and that is a really key point. Right? This is not about reliving, but about revisiting and even redoing. Right, and we can talk about it. But a lot of times when you suggest EMDR to clients, and sometimes it's faced with resistance because people are afraid of going back to a place of profound pain, right, or they're worried that they may not be able to handle it, or, they're afraid of what might come up, or some people really have this conflict around- am I going to discover something, right? about About the people that were supposed to love me and care for me?
Laurie Poole:Right
Gergana Markov:And they ended up hurting me. So sometimes people resist and I think that's key to kind of emphasize that we're not going to relive this. We're going to revisit for the purpose of shifting, right? For the purpose of shifting.
Laurie Poole:nd right. Well, let's go ahead and talk about what EMDR is, so that our listeners have a better understanding and might even consider this for themselves.
Gergana Markov:So the eye movement part this is how Francine Shapiro accidentally discovered, actually, the benefits of that intervention. I think she was a research psychologist and I don't know the details of the story. The point is she had received some bad news related to her health and, as somebody who was very connected to her body and mindfulness and meditation, I guess walking in the park was her safe place. So she went out to walk and kind of processing the news that she had just received and I don't know if there were things on both sides of her I'm assuming it was trees, I don't know, don't quote me on this, but she was moving her eyes left to right, back and forth, right between these things along the path and suddenly, because she was really connected to her body, she noticed that the distress she was feeling had reduced significantly.
Laurie Poole:Wow, wow.
Gergana Markov:So as a researcher, naturally she went back and started kind of digging into it and that's where the intervention came out of. So originally it was eye movement, because it's kind of mimicking REM sleep. So I'm going to try to kind of organize this in a way that a non-clinical person can follow and also can find it helpful, because I don't want to get too.. we don't want to get too into the neuroscience. But essentially EMDR kind of allows people to access the natural healing right functions of the body, the natural healing processes of the body, and that natural healing involves REM sleep. That's when kind of all the experiences we have get organized and stored and eventually processed and eventually moved into long-term memory.
Gergana Markov:What happens with trauma, traumatic events or memories kind of get stuck or frozen in the nervous system. They don't get to move through that natural process. So they call it the adaptive information processing of the mind. But anyways, traumatic experiences don't move through the process, they kind of get frozen. And so every time you experience something that in some way resembles that or reminds you of, that link between the central nervous system and the fear right Center of the brain activates the nervous system and you're having an experience as if it's happening to you right now.
Laurie Poole:Right yeah.
Gergana Markov:So what EMDR is doing is kind of jump-starting, right? This ability of the brain to process, consolidate, organize memories in a very similar mechanism as REM sleep, so that then, right, you can integrate these traumatic, from the traumatic memory bank right into the more adaptive information kind of holding space. And so that's how it started with eye movement.
Laurie Poole:Okay, that's what I've done. I follow a ball back and forth on the screen.
Gergana Markov:Yeah, AND that's kind of the original. That's how I started.
Laurie Poole:Yeah.
Gergana Markov:Since then we've started using other ways of activating left, right brain, right, and that they're called bilateral stimulation. It could be tapping. It could be tactile. I have these pulsers that clients can hold and they get activated. They kind of vibrate left to right, left to right. There's some people use sound, right, there are different ways, but it's always about bilateral stimulation.
Gergana Markov:And kind of in the simplest of ways, what EMDR does similarly to the REM process, right, is it activates all three parts, all the three major parts of the brain at the same time, so that then that's where kind of the healing happens, right, that natural healing process of the body. So we have, like the brainstem, like survival brain. There's the emotional part, right, the amygdala limbic system. That's where we hold the ability for emotion regulation, attachment.
Laurie Poole:Yes.
Gergana Markov:Safety right that's held there.
Laurie Poole:Okay.
Gergana Markov:And then the cerebral cortex, kind of the lobes, and the prefrontal cortex where we have the ability to kind of reason things, sequence right, make conclusions, all of that, so all three of those get activated at the same time. So now we go into what the desensitization part right stands for. That's basically the part of EMDR when we're reducing the vividness and intensity of the traumatic memory. So it reduces distress, the emotional charge is lower, yeah, so it feels different. Right, it's not going away, it's still there, it's just moving right into long-term memory and it doesn't feel as difficult and overwhelming.
Gergana Markov:And during the reprocessing part, then that's kind of when the re-evaluation and the restructuring happens of thoughts and beliefs. And that's kind of the part where we bring in and kind of integrate some of more of these adaptive right right views of others and the world itself. So that's it in a nutshell. Right, it starts from the past but you're basically kind of shifting the way you perceive and experience past experiences and you re-engage with your present and the future in a different ways. That's the beauty, kind of the benefit, of EMDR different ways.
Laurie Poole:Wow, that's a lot. Like it's just the way you described, like how this part of the brain and that part of the brain and this kid, it's like holy mackerel. That's a lot of processing which, as someone who has been a client in an EMDR therapy, I never thought about it that way. I will only say that, in my experience, what has never failed to amaze me is how I am able, throughout the session, to start pulling things together and going, oh my God, this is because of that, or something else will come up and it's really quite effortless. It's not like I'm pulling a blank. If I do, then we just, you know, we do the eye processing again.
Laurie Poole:But it' fascinates me and I'm so glad that you're here describing that. Let me ask, when you're doing EMDR with clients, sort of what kind of what have you noticed? Or what kind of responses do clients have? You know, immediately following a session? I'm just curious. I don't even know if you can categorize it in terms of a theme or a trend or a pattern, but I'm just curious.
Gergana Markov:I mean, obviously every person has a different experience right, With EMDR, and A different experience right With EMDR and a different, and they approach, kind of unpacking the experience differently.
Gergana Markov:, especially those who have struggled with something for a very long time and haven't been able to find an answer, hopped from therapist to therapist, used an intervention to intervention and just things just weren't clicking for them, right, and they're feeling kind of stuck and helpless with the obstacles they're experiencing in life. And they have this experience with EMDR and, like you said, the channels start to open, they start to make the connections, they're connecting the dots, things are starting to make sense, right. And then all of a sudden there's this coherent story about who I am, what my life is, right, Things start to make sense. People are amazed by . they're really enjoying that. Oh my gosh, right, I finally understand. That's one aspect of it and the other one is I think I've mentioned this in another conversation before it feels like you just opened a pressure valve and all of these intense emotions are all of a sudden like coming out and flooding your system Right and right, and it could feel overwhelming.
Gergana Markov:Yes, right Because they have been locked away and frozen for a very long time and here they are all of a sudden and I'm feeling all of these things and I'm having all of these thoughts and I'm having a very different experience from what I thought things were.
Laurie Poole:Right.
Gergana Markov:And that could feel like a lot, and that's why we resource clients before we go into the reprocessing. Okay, there is this kind of preparation stage when we make sure that clients have sufficient ability to regulate their emotions or kind of have some distress tolerance skills, or we do these kind of resourcing exercises for visualizing like a safe space or an ally. So these are the tools then you can use between sessions to then soothe your own nervous system At that point. My favorite, favorite part and it's related to something that you said earlier about EMDR is that it's so kind of empowering for clients because it gives them the autonomy of their own healing. You joined the word your own mind is fascinating, our bodies are fascinating, and it's just kind of pulling all the threads and putting things together and then we have a full picture, right, the puzzle is there. So at the end clients feel kind of newly empowered, right, they've reclaimed their ability to live the life they want. That's what I love a lot about.
Laurie Poole:They reclaim the life they loved to live or that they want to live, you know, they deserve to live, they reclaim. Wow, you just said a whole lot, Gergana, as you always do, my friend. Man, I'm so glad this is being recorded because I'll listen to it again and again.
Laurie Poole:You talked about allowing access to the natural healing process of the body, and that's what you're talking about when you say it's like clients have the autonomy. They're the ones who join the dots, who create this sort of.
Laurie Poole:To share another personal story, because I guess that's what I did, when I was doing EMDR and I was doing this you know all this stuff about puking what came to the surface was that as a child, I was not allowed to express distress. So the idea that I would throw up, that I wasn't allowed to say I didn't feel like I could say I don't feel good, right. So then vomiting became like this, source of fear because I couldn't let go, right. So, and not only that, I had to be covert about how terrible I felt. But it was only through EMDR that I was able to say, oh my God, now I understand.
Laurie Poole:I was not allowed to express distress and it was like, I mean I can't say that I'm entirely over the phobia, but it's not what it was before and that was that was such a revelation, because then that spilled into other things and understanding at a much deeper level about other aspects of my life or how I show up in relationships and that kind of thing. So it's been a very exciting journey for me as a therapist and as a client to get to the bottom of some of this stuff and just have these revelations and go, wow, and it's all stuff that comes out of my own mouth. It's not like a therapist is feeding me anything. Yeah, no. She'll say, okay, hold that, let's go there.
Laurie Poole:And then the blue buggies across my screen,
Gergana Markov:Yeah, just follow, notice, witness, and that's yes, that's the beauty of it. You are right and you are guiding the process and the therapist is just there to support, to encourage, to validate, to kind of remind you you're not alone, you're safe. And this is a different experience and that's what we call dual attention, that ability, and that's the job of the therapist, right, to make sure that you're reminded that you're here now, right, so you're holding one foot in the present and then one foot in the past. Yeah, and it's also our job to kind of make sure that things are moving.
Laurie Poole:Yes
Gergana Markov:Right. So in the beginning of, I don't know, you probably have had that experience, but the way we describe to clients what their role is in EMDR is kind of like imagine yourself, you're sitting on a train that's driving past by these beautiful landscapes and you are not stopping to take it in and think about it, you are just observing, right like you're on the train, and you're just watching the landscape as it passes by. Well, sometimes we encounter roadblocks, like sometimes clients get stuck on a space and they just can't move forward from there.
Gergana Markov:\Right it's the therapist's job to kind of make sure to clear the tracks right and keep the train running towards relief and recovery.
Gergana Markov:Bu t yeah you're doing the work and that redoing part right In therapy. I mean when we're trying to empower clients to kind of gain control over their own life and their decision Trauma what happened is just as important as what didn't happen. So, as you are doing EMDR right, there are two ways in which I, as a therapist, can support my clients and give them the opportunity of this redoing or reclaiming. It's on the one hand, I'm offering the understanding and validation and support right, You've got this and you're safe, or you have the, whatever the thing might be. And then the other part is then the client in the last part, right, and the reprocessing part, or future templating, is what we do at the very end, last stage. Then they get to show up as that kind of more adaptive, wise, mature version of themselves and offer that nurturing right to the more fractured, fragile part of them that was impacted by trauma.
Laurie Poole:What an amazing form of therapy, Gergana. I know we're running out of a bit of time here, but very quickly, when a client first starts with you, with EMDR, what could they expect in that first session?
Gergana Markov:So the first session, just like any other therapeutic approach, will be history gathering. Right, we'll talk about what brings you here, like I will try to learn a little bit more about what they're struggling with, what their challenges are, what their hopes and expectations are from therapy, and maybe that's where we start with the floatbacks, right, where we start with. Oh, here's your current experience. What does that feel like, right? What are you thinking? What is it feeling? The body? And then we could maybe ask direct questions like was there another time that you felt that way, or can you think of an earlier time? When was the first time you called yourself a loser?
Laurie Poole:Right.
Gergana Markov:And these are kind of the ways that we find our connection back to the root cause of present day challenges.
Laurie Poole:Okay.
Gergana Markov:And that's how we identify the targets right. And then that could be then session, depending on the client right, session one or session two. Then we'll do the targeting, we'll identify what the targets are and from there on it kind of gets more technical. But we look at how distressing it is right, because the goal is at the end of EMDR therapy, that the distress will be zero out of 10, right. Zero, one out of 10.
Laurie Poole:You know, that must be such a relie f, when you, when you just say by the end of the EMDR therapy the stress will be zero out of ten. To all our listeners, imagine what that might
Laurie Poole:feel like Zero out of 10. What a relief. Yeah, you know. In terms of that first session, how many sessions is there sort of an average number of sessions someone could expect, or is it really very individual based on client and what they're coming in for, etc.
Gergana Markov:Yeah, it is very individual.
Laurie Poole:Okay.
Gergana Markov:It is. It depends on what the client is processing. It depends on how ready they are Remember this is entirely right accessing their own body's ability to heal.
Gergana Markov:So people move at different pace of course some blocks might show up right, and there are kind of ways, interventions that we can use during the process to remove the blocks. There are like interweaves and I don't want to get too technical but there are things we can do right to make sure that we keep clearing the tracks for the healing to continue. So, yeah, it varies. Some people are able to process and experience within one or two sessions of reprocessing and then we do the future templating. That's kind of that changing, shifting the way of relating to the future. That happens, kind of the more adaptive right approach to life circumstances. Some people take a couple of sessions.
Gergana Markov:Some people, in the process of right healing one traumatic event, identify more targets because they're all these channels, right, they're all these memory channels that keep kind of like clogging, and they lead to other places, and so sometimes clients will identify new targets. So we'll clear a target and then move on to another one. It really depends.
Laurie Poole:Okay, well, listen, I can't thank you enough for the overview that you've provided today For anyone listening to this podcast who is interested in exploring EMDR therapy. You can reach Gergana through our website at themontfortgroup. com. You can schedule an appointment online. You can call the office. Gergana's bio is on our website so you can read all about her wonderful experience.
Laurie Poole:Gergana, you know, I honestly, I can't thank you enough for today. I think you're just a fabulous therapist and anybody who's sitting in the chair across from you is a very lucky person. I'm going to say that, all right, thank you again, and I'm sure we'll come back to maybe another episode on EMDR. Maybe we can get a little bit more into the types of trauma that show up and some of the things that you've worked with again to give clients and listeners an idea of just how diverse this form of therapy is, because it's really pretty special.
Gergana Markov:Really is. I've heard it being described as magical and I kind of see why.
Laurie Poole:Yeah, I do too, based on my experience. Yeah, thank you. So. Thank you so much, gergana. We'll talk again soon, take care, bye-bye.
Gergana Markov:Bye.
