Rewiring Trauma: My Experience with Attachment-Informed EMDR and Katie Heath-Tilford

My first session with Dr Katie Heath-Tilford was gentle in that I quickly felt at ease, and also I received reassurance from Katie that EMDR can be compatible with the ongoing therapy I have been engaged with for the last two years.

Katie explained the process clearly and her warmth helped me relax and move quite quickly into being in touch with emotions and memories that felt problematic, raw and as yet not fully processed.

I have been engaging in Integrative Arts Therapy while training to be an Integrative Arts Counsellor myself, so at this stage in my process, the difficult memories and feelings I wanted to bring to EMDR sessions were readily accessible. I am used to processing old ‘right-brain’ memories through showing and working them through in art or sand tray or role play.

This form of EMDR is attachment informed and from the first session Katie invited me to explore what I already know I can draw on that helps to keep me feeling safe, supported and grounded.

Each of the memories I explored were accompanied by intense body sensations and emotions yet not once did I feel overwhelmed or that I was being pushed to go too fast. I remained very much in touch with my here-and-now coping resources and my cognitive thinking at the same time as being gently guided to explore the feelings, bodily sensations and memories of the old traumatic experiences.

Katie directed me back and forth between these ‘right-brain’ implicit memories and the ‘left-brain’ sense making parts of my brain, over and over, amplifying the cross-brain activity with the use of a right-left click that came through my ear-phones, so that by the end of a session, the old memories had been made sense of in a new way, in present time.

The feelings after a session were quite extraordinary, as though my brain had literally been re-wired and what I noticed after the initial post-session tiredness had worn off was that ancient anxiety, dis-ease and pain had been replaced with more calm and a greater sense of ease and ‘ok-ness’ in my body and mind.

Remarkably this ease has remained with me and I am less triggered by the emotions and beliefs that historically have caught me off guard and sent me into defensive reactivity. They might still arise from time to time however my brain has replaced the old trauma reactions with new thoughts and responses that are appropriate to the present time and place. I do not feel as fragile or reactive as I did and am more able to choose my responses and relate to strong emotions with self-compassion.

 At the end of the day if we have had insecure attachments with primary caregivers we need to learn how to feel safe and trusting of our own internal ‘parent’. This therapy is a fast track to achieving that.

 RS