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My phobias only became more entrenched as I moved into adulthood, and they were in charge. As limiting and immobilizing as they were, I continued to think of them as quirks or flaws that I just had to negotiate my life around.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I began psychotherapy in my 20s, and my search for emotional healing stretched over 22 years, and seven different therapists. I was exposed to traditional talk therapy, CBT therapy, and Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy, but none of them offered any substantive or lasting relief.<\/p>\n
My search ended at the age of 61, when I walked into the office of an EMDR therapist. While my other therapists had focused on my various phobias, this one zoomed out<\/em> to look at the bigger picture of my life. To my surprise, he diagnosed the source of my phobias: early childhood trauma.<\/p>\n I was introduced to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), an evidence-based, memory-focused trauma therapy. And from the very first EMDR session, I felt relief. My therapist would guide me to a memory, or physical sensation, or emotion from a particular time in my childhood and have me move my eyes back and forth, from side to side, following his two fingers. This \u201cbilateral stimulation,\u201d a unique feature of EMDR therapy, allowed my brain to process memories that got frozen in my nervous system long ago and this, in turn, led to a dramatic decrease in my symptoms. My past was no longer intruding into my present.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n