EMDR
EMDR or Eye-Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing therapy was originally developed as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder, and is now a gold-standard treatment for this and an evidence-based treatment for a number of other mental health conditions.
There are a number of theories for why it works, including bilateral (both hemispheres of the brain) stimulation and working memory distraction. Experientially, what it seems to do is facilitate one's brain and nervous system to process distressing memories and emotional experiences and reduce the distress associated with them, including very intense or stuck patterns that have been around a long time.
EMDR is based on the Automatic Information Processing (AIP) model, which offers a theory of how the brain/nervous system has an in-built capacity for healing and moving towards adaptive functioning.
EMDR taps into a person's AIP system and facilitates desensitisation and reprocessing via dual awareness. Dual awareness simply means holding both an awareness of the present moment and one's resourced (adult) self while distressing emotions stored in younger memory networks are brought up and activated. As the video explains further, the bilateral stimulation involved in EMDR helps to soothe the amygdala and other limbic brain regions that are involved in the fear response, so that memories can be re-processed more neutrally.
IFS
IFS or Internal Family Systems therapy was originally discovered/created by then family therapist Richard Schwartz. He, almost by accident, started to treat an individual client as he would a family, being comprised of different parts (e.g., the part that wanted to drink and the part that wanted to stay sober, the part that criticises us and the part that feels criticised and anxious).
What he found was that this was a highly effective and de-pathologising way of relating to inner experience. Instead of identifying fully with [insert problem here] as a person, we can identify as a person with parts that have these difficulties. As Dr Tori describes in the video below, this gives a crucial moment of distance between ourself and the kinds of behaviours that we might come to therapy to change, right from the start.
Another advantage of the parts framework in IFS is the delineation of different types of parts. Early in therapy, for example, we tend to work more with Protector parts. These are often the parts 'causing' the problem behaviours. Yet, in this framework, protector parts are understood as carrying out a role - to protect younger, emotionally vulnerable or wounded parts known as Exiles.
As we work in therapy, we bring this nonjudgmental, compassionate perspective to parts that may have previously felt vilified or unwelcome due to the (admittedly unideal) coping strategies they employed in service of trying to protect the vulnerable parts of us. Over time, these protector parts feel understood, and open up to let healing in to the wounded young parts underneath. It can be a beautiful process, watching the parts heal and grow in confidence and understanding, and is highly effective as a therapeutic approach for many issues.
Bigger-than-Self Distress
Bigger-than-Self Distress is a concept that I developed in the course of my doctoral research project, and am continuing to unfold as an approach to dealing with some of the big issues of our times. Living with awareness of the risks of climate change, ecological degradation, societal fragmentation, inept or short-sighted political leadership, and rapid technological advances is inherently stressful.
These uncertainties and stresses fall on our increasingly isolated, overloaded, and often time-poor minds and nervous systems to try and metabolise. Naming this category of phenomena gives us more of a chance to identify these important forms of distress. If we can be aware of these and turn towards them, rather than unconsciously distancing ourselves from them, it is possible to find meaning and connection in digesting, making sense of, and consciously responding to those bigger-than-self issues that speak to us and our caring.
Therapy for bigger-than-self distress utilises mindfulness-based embodied approaches such as EMDR and IFS to metabolise distress that has its origins outside us as individual selves, yet which can inhabit and impact our beings profoundly nonetheless. It involves three distinct yet overlapping phases: sensemaking, metabolising, and niche construction.
Sensemaking involves, well, making sense of the issues that we care about and are distressed about, while metabolising them involves processing our embodied and emotional responses to them so that we are more able to stay with the issues without dipping into unhelpful coping strategies such as bypassing, blaming, burning out, or over-burdening ourselves. Niche construction involves making conscious changes to the environmental niches we inhabit and create around ourselves, and might include vocational or volunteering work.
Similar to the neurodiversity paradigm, the solutions to bigger-than-self distress are not solely, nor even perhaps primarily individual in nature, but involve making changes to ones social, and likely environmental (and maybe vocational and other) niches. It involves a dialectical balancing act between internal/psychological processing, and action and co-creation in the world with other people doing their own version of the same thing.
All of this adds up to a modality that aims towards wisdom, coherence, and alignment with the flows of bigger-than-self reality. These flows, referred to in Western, Eastern, and Indigenous wisdom traditions by such names as the Dao, the Logos, or the Mauri, to name but a few, when followed, strike a middle path between over-engagement and under-engagement, between seriousness and levity, between effort and ease, and reveal a harmonious path forwards in engaging with what are otherwise often overwhelming and distressing issues. It's something I'm passionate about, so if it sounds like something you would like to work on together, please get in touch.