My Therapist Says I’m Not Powerless — but What If I Am?
Recent news and EMDR therapy’s “positive cognitions” do not match up. How do we make sense of the world?
“I am powerless.”
I’m sitting on my therapist’s gray couch, looking over a laminated sheet of paper she gave me. We’re doing eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, which is basically a way to reprocess a traumatic event in a more helpful, adaptive way. (Yes, it sounds woo-woo, but it’s actually one of the gold-standard treatments for trauma!)
I’m looking through the sheet’s list of “negative cognitions” or “negative beliefs,” which are kind of like cognitive distortions, trying to find the ones that feel most relatable. Some seem a bit too intense — “I deserve to die” sticks out — but others don’t seem like “distortions” at all.
Is that the point of EMDR, to recognize the distortions that are so deeply embedded in our brains, they seem real? Or is this where the problem lies, in the idea that our fear is always a distortion rather than something justifiable?
“Um, ‘I am powerless,’” I call out. “That one for sure.” It feels weird, though, to utter those words in such a cut-and-dry way.
