Видео

The boat metaphor was INCREDIBLY helpful. Thank you so much

Very helpful, thank you so much

Thank you so much. 10:13 pm

Im catching up and watching all of your videos. Also bought your new book directly. Thanks! -Chelsea R

Thank you for your videos. I am learning a lot and find your communication style and instruction is very compelling and actionable.

Sir, do you then stop processing and container each new content data then resume to the target memory? I literally had a client's first session today start with a memory and a ton of other memories showed up every several passes. Probably 5-6 other significant trauma events showed up. I have a supervisor and will be conceptualizing this client, but thought I'd ask for the actual "in session" action you would take when the tuna, shark, and swordfish show up once you've hooked a small sea bass ;0).

I just did the grounding exercise as you narrated it, and it was very revealing. The sense of touch was very loaded. I noticed that I started to hold my breath because you were telling me to feel the temperature of something with my hand, and I was following your directions. This brought up a strongs ense of danger- signal to retreat in the nervous system. I then noticed that and was curious if the holding of the breath could soften slightly. It did and another part was commenting 'wow, that's amazing how the kitchen counter is actually safe to feel. It was ok for us to follow his directions and actually stay connected to the feeling in our hand AND (crucially) give space for the breath to soften.' Listening to the previous videos in this Playlist really helped to prepare for starting more connected to what was coming up instead of automatic dissociation. I am very grateful that you chose to share these videos here on RUclips. Very very helpful.🙏🏻

Parts will need to know that you can hear them and that you (the helper) will honour their choice to stop. YES! Really important to be heard and that the No is honoured. Thank You again 🙏🏻

The body, also, is where everything bad happened...😢😢😢 This is SO BIG, of course it will be a challenge to connect with the body given that history. So helpful.

7 min 27 secs

I love the way you break these down. It works so well with my ADHD brain.

Great information! Thanks for sharing!

Can you tell me if a client disassociates as a way of dealing with stress - will the flash technique still work

This was sooooo helpful!!! Thank you so much

Can you do a demonstration of this version please?

While splitting 30s into 5s to bring old memory does make sense, we really don’t know that increased amount of 5s juxtapositions is speeding up reconsolidation.

This is so helpful...thank you!

Very good ideas I like your thinking

Thank you so much!! Most of my clients have complex trauma, this really helped me understand why it takes longer to help these people!

When you catch, contain and put "it" out of your awareness, does that go in the container as well?

Your explanation is compelling and I am, personally, convinced by your approach to traumatised clients. I have one client who has been so damaged that he would benefit enormously from this approach. His significant difficulty is that his ability to visualise is, for the purposes of this approach, almost non-existent. I have now supplied him with a box and an attached lid that clicks shut because it has magnets that ensure it closes. I have approached the issue of a disturbing memory to see it as a film clip with a title… eg’Sisters bullying me’ so that there a sense of distance in just using the title to identify the episode. However, his difficulty is in putting it into the box and then quickly accessing it. His ‘calm scene’ is doodling, which he enjoys doing and he can do the four blinks and carry on with ease. The huge stumbling block is opening the box and closing it quickly… which he doesn’t seem able to do. He says it’s too fast to get anything with a fraction of a second… this angers him greatly and he rages about not being able to do the exercise, he finds that it’s all too cumbersome, then the memories flood in and his anger at them is full on. I’m going to have to slow it all down greatly and to take each element step by step. It crossed my mind that I could perhaps explain that a very swift opening and closing could work subliminally…but decided not to use that as he’d argue that he wouldn’t pick up on anything to feel at all. It’s even occurred to me that, because we’re using a physical box, that it’s harder to send away so the idea of a warehouse of identical boxes isn’t going to work either. Finally, the use of a vacuum cleaner to suck out his discomfort/distress doesn’t work as he can’t visualise that…although he can use a long breath to blow it out. I’m working with him remotely and he has just a smart phone, no computer, no tv or dvd player so the calm scene had to be an activity… hence the doodling that he does to relax in any case. Any advice or thoughts to impart that might be useful? He’s 55 and is hyper vigilant, very intelligent and tends to feel that life is a war zone that started when he was a child. He self-sabotages and has even, a couple of times, damaged his career as a musician.

As a client, I really wish I'd understood this before attempting EMDR. I wouldn't have liked it, i was desperate for a quick fix, but the truth would ultimately have been a lot kinder

The more I learn about EMDR, the more I realize how poorly done my experience with EMDR was. I don't think my therapist was experienced with treating complex PTSD. First of all, she did no prep work to make sure I had the skills to emotionally regulate and contain what came up between sessions. Fortunately I'd been doing somatic work for the last 2.5 years, so I had some skills anyway, but I still would have benefited from education and practice with containment. She should have at least made sure I really had the skills instead of just assuming I'd be fine. Processing my first target memory went really well. It was a shock trauma, and I had a complete episodic memory of it, which made it pretty ideal for processing. I didn't get overwhelmed, and I did process it. But that was the only trauma memory I could remember more than just fragments of. Next one I tried was a whale - an amalgamation of related traumatic events that happened regularly over many years. Trying to process that was like pulling on a ball of yarn and the whole thing started to unravel. All of my trauma was interconnected (since it was basically the entirety of the first 11 years of my life). I was biting off way more than I could chew. I shouldn't have gone that fast, and the therapist should have known better than to let me go that fast. She also should have known better than to open up that Pandora's box right before a 6 week break in our therapy (she was going on vacation and had some other obligations). I got so destabilized, it took me months to recover and put the lid back on that box. I had to stop doing EMDR entirely. I still haven't returned to it two years later. I've just been focusing on stabilization. I want to come back to doing EMDR again in the future and finish what I started, but I want to make sure I'm properly resourced first, because I do not want to get flooded like that again. I got hit with that abandonment trauma wound and it was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. It was excruciating. Made me want to kill myself, despite being lucid and aware enough to realize that that pain was not likely to last more than a day at most. But even having to live with it that long felt like too much. There was no length of time that that pain could be tolerated. I got through it with support from a friend who was on the phone with me for three hours helping me regulate, but like... that was rough. I'm still glad I did EMDR, though, because boy did that change a lot. It was really intense, but I did actually process a good chunk of the trauma before getting too overwhelmed to continue. Now I don't get triggered as much as I used to, I don't have the same level of anxiety, and I can now assert boundaries, whereas before I couldn't because I would freeze up. I believe in the power of EMDR, but I also recognize how dangerous it can be if wielded incorrectly and without proper caution.

Thank you Thomas. So informative and encouraging. I love my work as an EMDR therapist and look to people like you to inform and refine my work.

that is a great way of looking at the process! that we can help the change in a small percentage of their waking hours. And so we can!

Extremely well said.

Your insight and compassion is so encouraging!

Thank you! I am looking forward to reading your book!

Thank you! I don't think they know how complicated it can get. Resources get webbed up. Positive feelings are associated with negative feelings. It's ... complicated.

This is such helpful information thank you vert much 🌟

Hi Thomas, I'm a therapist who has been using EMDR/IFS for the most part successfully for a while. After learning the your 4 blinks version of Flash, it has helped multiple clients for whom EMDR was unsuccessful, or they didn't feel safe enough to do. I an inspired by your work and your generosity, and have been spreading the word to my colleagues and will continue to do so. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing! I am self adminestering and i can witnes - works great. Apreciate what you doing here:)❤

I have trauma could I have therapy session online with Thomas Zimmer?

Thank you, this is helpful.

As a matter of interest - has a client (especially one who is logical in his/her thinking) ever questioned how, or why, one can swiftly 'open the memory' to test it when it's already been containered and sent off?

Thank you Thomas. I am currently completing EMDR basic training and at times struggle with the standard protocol. I have some training in IFS and find am intuitively adding parts work as needed. Glad to hear that it is as important as it seems to be. Always obtain permission and always check in with 'who' is present or running the show in that session.

Seems like his counting out loud would be distracting from her trying to envision the calm scene. Why not just tell her to blink when it's time and count in his head?

Insightful and delivered with calm clarity

In my case implicit somatic memory triggered is way more powerful than recall 40 years back even with topographic approach. Why would I not use more powerful memory which is a trigger as target.

Why implicit memory that manifests in body when triggered would not be at its best for desensitization. It activates the same limbic network that original or theme memories are. Is there good explanation.

Thank you. I had to keep stopping and re-running parts of this in order to make notes and to think about what you were saying. Your explanation of these ideas and strategies is very clear, but is so densely packed with meaning and resonance that just one hearing wasn't enough for me. Your metaphors are especially helpful in solidifying the points you are making... and at the same time giving nuance to the processes to which you allude. I'm often astounded by the depth and strength of the nervous system in clients to protect them through their lives, in many ways it's super-human. Oh, but I ache to see them healed and to be able to allow that energy to be used for them and not against them ... and every small step along that road is wonderful. When a client tells me that for most of his life he has felt like a refugee (he's in his 50s) in every sense of the word, then the magnitude of his trauma can hardly be imagined.

Then if it’s not a resource it is surely a therapy system in and of itself. It might have had its genesis in EMDR but it’s now a standalone process. Which rather begs the question… if it is so complete and thorough, why doesn’t it supersede all other therapies?

Is there a work-around for clients who find REAL difficulty in creating, maintaining and using visualisation for the container, moving stuff into the container and making it move away etc and creating a calm scene? Is it possible that a client can do a quiet activity, such as colouring in/painting; reciting out loud a poem that they like; sorting a pile of coins or playing cards into suits, etc as a substitute for visualising a calm scene, for example? Is it possible similarly find a different way to, at least, put things into a container... could it be an actual container? Or does it have to visually 'leave the space' occupied by the client?

Thank you! I have some pretty awful school pictures myself that simply break my heart! Your videos allow some hopefulness in the process as I vacillate rapidly between utter despair and a sense of peace, two months into what call parts-informed EMDR work.

Thank you Very Much for this message, Just listening and being present seems to be what is most healing for these folks Thank you for validating This is hard work!

In case of implicit memory, there is no beginning and end of the memory. No video can be played. Visual memory if any is fragmented.

I would prefer deep abdominal breathing. It is hard to deal with flashback by visualizing. Everyone has to find their own method. Good therapist would help building client's own resilience. Unfortunately EMDR is full of this kind of visual "techniques" that only pretend.

I am always skeptical about imagining box like things. So what that I visualize containing that paper slip. It's in my body that this short memory is present. I can feel it. I cannot push it out of awareness by pretending I am putting in some kind of box. Memory manifests in my body. Your visualization is quite artificial. I know this is EMDR "tradition" that wants us to pretend the memory is placed in container. It it were so Id keep it there all the time and save therapy expenses.

It's amazing and i wonder if it works for cptsd clients

Oh wow, amazing, thank you for sharing this valuable information.