Straight out of A Clockwork Orange: My Weirdest Treatment

I want to tell you about the weirdest and most effective mental health treatment I've ever had. Last year, I was seeing a fantastic psychiatrist to help with my panic attacks, and at the end of one session I had with him he explained what he would be doing with me the next week. As he explained it to me, I thought it sounded mental. But I went along with it because this guy's a doctor and, if nothing else, I thought it would be a funny story.

EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This is what I mean when I tell you it sounded mental when my doctor told me about it. The name itself sounds like it was going to be like that scene in A Clockwork Orange where Alex is strapped down, has his eyes held open and has to watch war scenes. I had never heard of EMDR before my doctor mentioned it to me and given the increase in research it's received in recent years, and the success it's seen in the treatment of conditions like PTSD, panic disorder and GAD, I think it's worth talking about.

During EMDR, the doctor sits facing you, moving their finger from side to side like a pendulum very quickly quite close to your face. You keep your focus on their finger moving as they talk to you about past traumas, attempting to place you in quite a shitty mindset for the treatment. There are videos of it on YouTube, which I have included in this post so you can hear about it from people way more qualified to talk about it than I am.

By focusing on the finger moving quickly from side to side in front of your face, the idea is to simulate REM (Rapid Eye Movement), which we do in states of deep sleep. Some studies suggest that REM helps us to process trauma and survival techniques, and compartmentalise memories. This is disputed by some in the scientific community, but given the extra attention EMDR is getting from researchers at the moment we will hopefully have a greater understanding of it soon. Listen, the last thing I am is a doctor or a scientist, so I'm not going to delve any deeper into that side of it. There are plenty of scientific journals, TED Talks and articles about REM and EMDR if this interests you.

I want to talk about my experience of EMDR and how it's changed my approach to my mental health. The treatment itself is exhausting. It doesn't sound particularly taxing to have to move your eyes for an extended period of time, but pair that with having to hear your traumas and problems repeated to you over and over again, and it's quite a tiring combination.

As my doctor repeated events and feelings I had told him about and I watched his finger move in front of my face, something really weird happened. My mind went to a totally different place. I was thinking about completely unrelated events and feelings as the doctor spoke, so I thought I was doing it wrong. I tried to focus on what he was saying, but I couldn't maintain focus on the grim things he was saying to me for any longer than a few seconds before my thoughts went somewhere else. After about five minutes, he stopped to let me have a break. He asked me what I was thinking about during the treatment and I apologised to him, telling him I was struggling to focus. He smiled, and carried on the treatment.

Once the hour was up, he told me the idea was to reattach those memories- to compartmentalise them, recalibrate them. My mind wandering was exactly what it was supposed to do, because it meant that I was managing to recalibrate the traumas and memories he was talking about during the treatment. I went home that evening feeling physically and emotionally exhausted, and after hearing my problems repeated back to me I cried all night. I went to sleep feeling like I'd been run over, and then woke up the next day feeling great. It was quite unsettling that something I had been so apprehensive about, and a treatment that deliberately reopened old wounds, had seemingly changed things overnight.

Since having EMDR, I have had fewer panic attacks. I recently saw Jameela Jamil tweet about EMDR and how much it had helped her overcome anxiety and body dysmorphia. She mentioned that the treatment was rarely used, I would say particularly in the NHS, and she had found it life changing. I'm really glad that someone influential and well known is talking publicly about EMDR, and I hope it encourages people to look into it a bit further.

I rationalise everything. Often, things are black and white in my head and I can't open my mind to treatment that sounds pseudoscientific, exploitative or different to the standard procedure. I'm not one to try Reiki or crystal skull healing. I don't think it's a bad thing to be critical and autonomous in my treatments, but it has probably held me back from things that could have been useful had I tried them. After years of treatment from the NHS and my university, I have become quite cynical towards mental healthcare. I find it difficult to believe that something or someone can help me after so many failed attempts, but having EMDR has changed my approach. I'm still not going to be rushing to my local crystal emporium to buy some knickers made out of rose quartz, but I have learned to be more open. I think most strategies probably have something that can be drawn from them and added to a person's mental health toolkit, and everything is worth a try as long as you keep yourself informed of the rationale behind it. Apart from crystals. Crystals can fuck off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKrfH43srg8