What is IFS-informed EMDR?
Hopefully you arrive at this blog with a basic understanding of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapies, separately. If not, I warmly invite you to read both prior blog articles to access these individual introductions.
It’s helpful to know a little bit about what EMDR is before deciding whether or not it could be the right therapy for you. In order to understand what kinds of presentations/problems EMDR is most suitable for, first it’s important to discuss some of the basics about how traumatic experience gets stored and stuck, according to the theory underpinning EMDR.
Perhaps becoming more aware of “the body in therapy” is an idea you have heard lots about in recent years and with which you agree in principle? However, as a potential therapy client or even an interested professional, you still don’t necessarily feel you have a complete hold on – why and how does the body actually matter in therapy?
Most of us ask and answer the question “how are you?” several times each day, but how often do you really give yourself the space to find the deeper answer?
A core message I wish to share via my work as a body focussed psychologist is that there are many ways in which we can benefit our wellbeing and accelerate healing via connecting and listening to the innate wisdom of our bodies.
Most of us are aware that non-verbal behaviour like posture, eye contact and movement greatly influence how others perceive us.
“If you think of your body as a house, movement is the large front door, swinging wide open to allow your awareness, your thinking, to enter back inside where you have always belonged”
hILLARY mCbRIDE, pHD
Orienting is a skill you already have (because it’s hard-wired into your nervous system). But you can learn to strengthen or recover it during stressful times to help to communicate to your brain and body that you are safe during times when stress and overwhelm take you back to traumatic memory or forward in anticipation of something difficult.
Orienting helps you to focus on your external environment and lean into cues around that tell you where you are now, is safe.
The popular grounding technique of tuning into the five senses uses orienting to bring you into the moment:
Name
5 things you can see
4 things you can hear
3 things you can feel
2 smells and
1 taste
You could also try:
👀 Look around you and name one item to the front, one behind you, one to the left and one to right. Add extra detail if you like by going up then down.
✏️ Choose an object nearby and describe it in detail to yourself
🤚🏽 Reach out and touch the nearest wall or surface. Place both hands on and describe the feeling in detail.
👣 Take your shoes off and stand on the earth.
Psychology is full off fancy words for natural, inbuilt strengths which we can use to our advantage. I love uncovering the brilliance in our systems. As always, these strategies are even more powerful when they’re happen in the presence of another.
My childhood best friend and I used to ask each other “can you smell your nose?” then we’d curl the tips of our noses round into themselves and genuinely investigate 🥰 I still do it sometimes and find it really soothing.
What orienting strategies do you already use or could you build on now you know the idea behind it?
Getting regulated when you’re stressed or overwhelmed doesn’t have to be complicated. Essentially you’re looking for something which cues a sense of safety to your system, and although there are loads of great “exercises” out there to learn, actually, many of the things you’re already good at will also do a great job in these moments if applied consciously.
You have this wisdom built in you and you will naturally go looking for these opportunities for grounding.
The list is endless but here are some less obvious ideas I love:
🍀 nurture something you care about. Yes this could be tending to a plant, or it could be making a drink for a buddy, or tickling a pet.
⚡️try a weather themed playlist! Long thunderstorms while going to sleep feature in this house atm.
✨ embrace things you find beautiful. This is so underrated! Immerse yourself in a picture, draw, glitter gel your nails, read poetry.
🧹 organise a messy cupboard or colour-code a shelf of books. It reminds me of the feeling of reorganising your bedroom as a child.
🌤️ check in on your comfort basics (eat, drink, wee etc) then lie somewhere near a window and feel the light rays on your skin.
One that I come back to time and time again, is neural networks in the brain, as well trodden paths.
If we’ve been used to feeling, thinking or acting in a certain way, based on what made sense to us when we were much younger, we might very easily (likely without awareness) just always feel, think or act in that way, because that “way” has a well rehearsed pattern, very literally wired into our chemistry.
We might begin to recognise that that response is unhelpful but even then it can be really hard to catch it before it plays out in our reality.
Well trodden paths are much easier to walk. Even when they don’t feel good, or cause us problems in the longer term, they are our automatic response and while we might dislike the route, it’s comfortable, like a smelly old shoe.
In therapy, often my work is to help someone identify that old pattern.
Importantly we explore and understand why it began – because there is inevitably an entirely sensible function, even to the most complicated “patterns” and responses.
Then we spend some time spotting it together as it happens, perhaps between sessions, or perhaps between us.
We work out how someone might want to swap their old patterns, for newer, more helpful ones. Responses that are more appropriate to how life is now.
Then we practice walking the new path. This can be so hard because the path is far less accessible. There may be brambles and bracken, nettles and fallen down trees. Initially it takes MUCH more energy than the old path. In this work you are literally creating new neural pathways, but they are far less automatic. This is the hard work of therapy.
A client recently created his own twist on this idea by talking about making new paths in the snow. He said that therapy was like someone holding a hairdryer ahead of him 🤣.
I loved that. It can get a bit sparky 🔥 but mostly I hope, the experience is one of someone walking alongside you, helping to navigate, and guide you back to your goals when you are inevitably distracted by the old.
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