What’s The DIF?
When clients come to EMDR Therapy, the first phase includes history taking, symptom identification, and screening for suitability for EMDR Therapy.
History taking involves considering things like family life, work-life, education, employment, medical history, self-care strategies, and conflicts, and challenges affecting functions.
These challenges may include various symptoms resulting from anxiety, depression, and traumatic experiences, so you may be screened for these in order to rule it in, or rule it out, and if it’s there, to get a baseline measure of severity and impact on current functioning. Thirdly, screening includes finding out about pain, eye problems, pregnancy, seizures, dissociation, and your ability to self-regulate(calm yourself down when distressed). Lastly, a global treatment plan is determined based on your concerns.
Once the above have been addressed, we move on to phase two. in this phase, clients have an opportunity to learn more about EMDR, and are prepared for therapy, partially through learning some exercises for self-regulation. Now you might ask the question: “what’s the DIF? why should I do those exercises my counsellor taught me anyway?”
Well, the exercises you will learn provide an opportunity to interrupt the discomfort and literally get out of that state in the moment. I like to use the analogy of landing a plane: sometimes we are circling over the city, and we just can’t land, but we need to get back on the tarmac to function, so we land the plane, get onto the tarmac, and we can breathe, and think again.
Many people arrive in therapy overwhelmed by their feelings, not realizing they CAN interrupt that momentary state. One only has to look at mediation, yoga, mindfulness, and other activities that can assist with interrupting our level of discomfort in any given moment. Talking may help a little too, but not as much as we would like, in terms of getting out of the discomfort, or at least not as quickly as we would like.
Those exercises your therapist will teach you – and there are a handful such as containment, safe state, and others – can do the following:
A) The DURATION of your symptoms or reactivity, is shortened by doing the exercises when you are in the middle of the discomfort.
B) The INTENSITY of the discomfort is also reduced in the moment.
C) The FREQUENCY of the symptom or reaction can also be reduced by doing the exercises regularly.
When people attend therapy what they usually want more than anything else is RELIEF. so that is where we begin once we have completed Phase 1.
Furthermore, while some people are quick to learn the techniques and get the benefit, others need to practice it whenever they need to until they get good at it. In both cases, you are developing a new strategy that becomes a healthy way to deal with discomforting and can become your default for managing discomfort more effectively, while at the same time, reducing the DURATION, INTENSITY and FREQUENCY of the discomfort.
These techniques are a necessary step in preparing for EMDR Therapy, because if one can’t self-regulate we would be ill-advised to open up trauma, and other underlying causes of the discomfort. Fundamentally, clients are better able to manage any discomfort that comes up between sessions, in addition to moving towards reducing the DURATION, INTENSITY, and FREQUENCY of their discomfort.
