Page 23 of Just Between Us

“Perfect. Now, let’s set up the target. Bring up the image of what happened. What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” While I’m talking, I pay close attention to Mara’s body language. How she glances down and away. Not making eye contact with me.

“The way he looked at me.”

“And when you picture that, what do you believe about yourself?”

There’s a long pause while her eyes drop to her lap again. “My body isn’t mine.”

“And what would you like to believe instead?”

“That it does belong to me.” She says it like she’s testing out the words for the first time, a language she’s just learning.

“On a scale of one to seven, how true does that feel right now? That your body belongs to you.”

“Two. If that.”

“That’s okay, Mara. That’s our starting point.” I jotVOC - twodown on my notepad. “Now, when you picture him and that belief of your body not being yours, what emotion comes up?”

“Shame.” Not even a second of hesitation on that one.

“I want you to hold the image of him, and the thought that your body isn’t yours. Don’t try to push it away or change it. Just let it exist. Try to notice where you feel that in your body and follow the dot.”

I activate the bilateral stimulation on my end and Mara’s eyes start moving left to right, left to right, following the green dot across the screen. This goes on for thirty seconds, while I study her face, the squinting of her eyes and quickening of her breath.

Tapping the button, I stop the movement of the dot. “Now take a deep breath in and let it go.” Pausing, I watch her through my screen as she breathes in and out.

“Now tell me, where do you feel it in your body?”

Her hand drifts from where it rests on her desk. “Here. In my stomach. It’s like a queasy feeling. And I feel sweaty.”

“On a scale of zero to ten, how disturbing does the memory feel right now?”

Mara’s nose scrunches and she clamps her eyes shut, a tear tracking down one cheek.

“It’s okay, Mara. There is no wrong answer.”

I give her a second to collect herself until her eyes are back open. “Eight.”

On my notepad I write downSUDS - 8.

“Stay with that and watch the dot again.”

Her eyes follow the path of the dot, back and forth over and over. This is the part people don’t understand about EMDR. It looks like nothing from the outside. A teenage girl watching a dot move on a screen. But in her head, her brain is doing the thing it couldn’t do on its own. It’s unsticking the memory from the place where it’s been trapped, letting it move fromthis is happening right now, tothis happened but it’s over.

“Take a breath again and tell me what you notice?”

Mara’s brows furrow and then smooth. “My stomach doesn’t hurt quite as much. Like, it still does but less.”

“Great!” I give her a quiet round of applause. “That’s your brain progressing. You’re doing such a great job.”

We do three more sets and by the time our session is wrapping up, her SUD has dropped from an eight to a seven. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but there’s a change behind her eyes that wasn’t there an hour ago.

“Tell me, how does that belief feel now, that your body belongs to you?”

She’s quiet for a long time and I hear the tapping sound again. “Maybe a three?”

I hope the pride I feel for this kid shows on my face, because I for one, am positively beaming. “You know that’s an awfully big jump from a possible two to a three, right?”

For the first time in our session, this earns me the smallest lift of her lips. Just barely. A flash of silver braces and gone. “Yeah, I guess it is.”