Nightmares, sudden spacing out, waking up believing you’re somewhere other than home, driving down the highway and thinking you’re in a Humvee rather than the Chevy you just left in, chronic vigilance of neighborhood comings and goings, checking to see if the enemy is on your tail, living with a sense that life won’t be here for much longer and not even being sure if you care. Believe it or not, these are all very typical symptoms that our returning military personnel are experiencing right now.
Many of these symptoms prevent sleep and relaxation, get in the way of fun times with friends and family and cause an overwhelming sense of isolation from loved ones who try, but just can't understand it. Often our military members are suffering in silence, hoping the symptoms will go away, not wanting to carry the stigma that they are somehow weak or have something wrong “up top”. And let’s face it, nobody wants to be told that they need medication, which is traditionally how such symptoms have been treated.
The beauty of EMDR is that all of these symptoms can be significantly reduced within a few sessions, and in most cases, healed completely in a matter of months. No medication, no stigma, and no need for anyone to know.
How?
To understand how, we need to take a look at what those symptoms are about.
If one of our feet was run over by a passing truck, we would expect it to hurt. We would spend time in hospital having the bones reset, sit for weeks in plaster or a hard boot waiting for it to heal, and then undergo a painful exercise regime to rebuild its strength. It may be months or years before we can walk on it again – if ever. We hope such accidents won’t happen to us, but sometimes they do, and when they do we deal with the consequences.
What we often dismiss, however, is how the brain can get hurt too. If we witness something devastating, ugly or horrific, it will – and should – affect us. In fact, if it didn’t affect us then there’d probably be something wrong with us. We’d be considered hardened, inhumane, a psychopath. The symptoms that our veterans are suffering happen not because they are weak, but because they are human, seeking to survive like all human beings. Unlike the rest of us, however, they have witnessed ordeals no human being should ever have to face.
Surprisingly enough, nightmares, flashbacks and hypervigilance are all aspects of the human survival system. The brain is trying to learn everything it possibly can from a bad experience so that it can spot the signals and keep us from ever having to undergo something like that again in the future. But sometimes this survival system goes into overdrive and prevents us from identifying the true level of threat in front of us. By using the brain’s natural information processing system, EMDR helps to restore the balance, ensuring that the brain retains all the information it needs to learn from the experience while allowing us to respond appropriately to anything that may unconsciously remind us of the trauma we have witnessed.
As a result of this reset, EMDR gives us back our uninterrupted sleep, clears out the flashbacks, and enables us – amazingly – to feel normal again. In fact, it’s not unusual for spouses to report that their veterans are even nicer people after EMDR than they were before they went to war.
How does EMDR do it? Click here to find out more.
© 2012, Jane McCampbell, MA, LMFT
EMDR Counselor and Couples Therapist
Specializing in EMDR and treatment of rauma symptoms
Jane McCampbell Counseling Services, LLC
Minneapolis St Paul, Minnesota
Jane McCampbell Counseling Services, LLC Baker Court, 821 Raymond Avenue, Suite 325, St Paul, MN 55114 Tel: 612 414 0383
EMDR for Veterans - PTSD Therapist Jane McCampbell explains the symptoms
EMDR for Veterans Page: EMDR for Veterans and Military Personnel with PTSD: Why do we get nightmares and Flashbacks? by PTSD Specialist Jane McCampbell, St Paul MN
