The Marathon, Mount Everest, and The Video Game Metaphors for EMDR Therapy скачать в хорошем качестве

The Marathon, Mount Everest, and The Video Game Metaphors for EMDR Therapy

Related to the boat and fish metaphor, the marathon metaphor explains that EMDR therapy is a journey for people with complex trauma. This is particularly relevant when new clients come to session with extreme trauma and they want to work on really big stuff first. We can tell them, that sounds like a marathon. Our clients with complex trauma can’t run a metaphorical marathon today, really healthy people probably can, and many Olympians probably can. But, that’s not your clients. What’s sensible with many clients with complex trauma is to start with a Couch to 2K program over about eight to twelve weeks. Metaphorically, we start walking and then walk-jogging. Then, when you can run a 2K, do that. Hang out there and in doing so, we are preparing for a 5K. Hang out there. Prepare for the 10K. Hang out there to prepare for the half-marathon. Then, prepare for the marathon. The point is that we don’t start with the marathon. We can recognize it as our goal, but preparing for the 2K is what allowed us to start it. The least sensible way for most people with complex trauma is to have them start with the marathon. They are very likely to get hurt. And these are people we are trying to help. We are worried about this work potentially decompensating them. A related metaphor is the Mount Everest metaphor. Shapiro explains that starting with a big mountain can be an efficient way to work, because everything after that will feel like a small hill. She’s not wrong if your clients are Olympians. Are your clients Olympians? There are right now 200 dead bodies on Mount Everest. It’s not safe to remove them. If we need to tackle Mount Everest, and with clients with complex trauma we probably do, maybe we start with some hills first. Maybe we go to some bigger hills after that. For young people, you may explain that in modern video games, we don’t rush as fast as we can to the big boss fight that will let us beat the game. We need to look around and pick up gold. We need to build up our health scores, healing scores, and explore resources that may be hiding in the landscape so that by the time we get to the boss fight we are resourced enough to have some chance at it not squashing us. Whether we need to run a marathon or climb Mount Everest, it’s the starting somewhere that begins the process of developing the skills, endurance, and adaptive information needed when we get there. Once the client is resourced to start and you find a place to start that is productive and tolerable, the actual work can begin. One of the biggest risks is that we get so overwhelmed by everything that we aren’t going to start. Which is unfortunate. You are a trauma therapist, and your clients urgently need to heal.