Rattlesnakes, Transformation, & the Power of EMDR Therapy
Last month I had a very special experience. I was hiking my favorite trail and happened to glance down just in time to see a snake slithering on my right side heading toward the brush. I noticed its beautiful brown skin and interesting pattern. On second glance, I saw the white rattle of a rattlesnake tail! This was my first ever live sighting! The snake didn’t seem concerned about me at all (thankfully!), though I was quite excited about it.
As usual, when I encounter an animal, I like to look at the spiritual meaning. Most often I find some parallel in my own life. Rattlesnakes symbolize transformation, rebirth, and healing. Like all snakes, they symbolize shedding the old and embracing the new. They also embody awareness, intuition and personal power. They are a message to trust your inner strength; to shed what no longer works for you and step into a more authentic empowered version of you.
This message certainly resonates for me and where I’m at in my life journey, including having opened a new office space recently, which I’m thrilled about on so many levels. And it also resonates with my passion for and commitment to EMDR therapy. Interestingly, the messages of the rattlesnake are strongly aligned with the many benefits of EMDR. (If you’re new to EMDR, click here for more info).
Rattlesnake Wisdom & 5 Benefits of EMDR:
HEALING:
EMDR is a therapy for true healing & change; for resolving and letting go of patterns that no longer serve you. When an experience is hurtful or overwhelming, and the memory is inadequately processed, it gets stored with our perception at the time as well as some images, thoughts, emotions, and sensations. These remain activating and can lead us to over-react to triggers in the present. Our brain and nervous system are hijacked into the past. We cannot talk ourselves out of these triggers; they must be resolved in the body (and in the nervous system). EMDR and the use of bilateral stimulation helps the body both integrate and resolve inadequately processed memories so they can be completely over and in the past. This healing is deep and provides lasting change.
AWARENESS & INUTITION:
EMDR requires you to hold “dual awareness.” This is the awareness of both your inner experience while reviewing memories as well as your outer experience that helps you know events are not happening now. The process also accesses your body’s innate ability to heal.This is part of intuition. It is about allowing vs making change happen. Believe it or not, your system knows exactly what it needs to heal and let go! As an EMDR therapist, I help hold the container and make sure the change process continues, as our own defenses or protective mechanisms inevitably emerge as well. EMDR can feel like an intuitive process and many clients feel surprised (and sometimes even delighted) by the memories, ideas, and resources that emerge in the process. Clients also report feeling more connected to themselves, have more confidence, and a deeper understanding of who they are and what their true experience has been, including their feelings, needs, and desires.
PERSONAL POWER:
Often traumas and overwhelming experiences, especially early in life during formative years, create a confusion about who is responsible for what. As an adult that can look like people pleasing, taking a victim role, inability to see choices, being overly accommodating, and even being aggressive or trying to control others as a few examples. These behaviors often stem from a familiar (and likely unconscious) sense of not having power, control or choice and having to endure something difficult all the while. EMDR reprocessing helps resolve these early confusions and restore an individual’s sense of personal power. Which is different from power over others. It's the power to know ourselves, our needs, feelings and desires, and be able to act on them to create a meaningful life.
DUALITY:
This can be seen both in the EMDR’s use of dual awareness (discussed above), and also in how the process helps an individual harness the ability to hold pain and hope; take the good with the bad; what was and what’s possible. EMDR helps us hold more effectively the BOTH AND of life. It also helps us embrace the spirituality of life- that we are more than what has happened to us. This is such an important component of health and healing.
TRANSFORMATION & REBIRTH:
As memories get resolved and new, more realistic beliefs take shape, clients report feeling more alive, more in touch with themselves, more engaged in life in meaningful ways, and finally have freedom. They get to explore who they are without the pain. EMDR often includes filling in developmental gaps and accentuating new skills and strengths to help meet the challenges of life from a truly adult perspective, free from the pain of our inner child.
EMDR both addresses and resolves past wounds while simultaneously strengthening new resources to help us become more flexible and adaptable and in touch with our most authentic self.
I am honored to work with my clients on their path of transformation. It is quite a gift to witness their personal growth and all that that includes. The whole hot mess of it! In the journey we laugh together, sometimes cry together, and use open, heart-felt discussion to seek clarity and honesty. As a therapist, I help hold the broad view of their strengths and their full humanity and EMDR provides the container that allows one’s system to move toward healing.
Healing is innate, especially once we identify the barriers and defenses that are keeping us stuck in pain. What your system needs is the opening, as well as to be witnessed with love and compassion. This last part is essential and is why self-help and healing alone isn’t enough.
Transformation is hard work, and often not at all comfortable. But the moments and periods of freedom, spaciousness, joy, lightness, love, and true connection that emerge as we transform are incredible to behold. We are all capable, and yet it’s hard to go it alone. Having the right ally and the right tools can make a huge difference.
I have found EMDR therapy to be the deepest opportunity for true healing and transformation. If you’d like to know more about EMDR therapy, click here. And if you’re interested in talking more about therapy with me, click here to set up a free consultation.