I have started a new form of therapy today. It's called EMDR therapy, short for Eye Movement Densensitization and Reprocessing. It's a form of psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of chronic stress and trauma.
It's quite unlike any form of therapy I've experienced before.
My therapist sat across from me on her laptop, while I was given an iPad. She instructed me to observe a ball bounce across the screen, and to press the right button when the ball changed shape and the left button when the device made a sound.
She instructed me to really dive into all the feelings and emotions brought about by a certain stressful event, while she added more sounds and had the ball change colours, and asked me to tell her the name of the colour.
We would take breaks where she would ask me to rate the intensity of the visceral reaction I felt when thinking of said traumatic event, and name the emotion I felt.
I was quite surprised, but over the course of the hour and half, the intensity did subside.
I made a joke about how it felt like I played a videogame, while absolutely indulging in overthinking.
She said that studies have shown that Tetris has shown to have therapeutic effects, and that Trauma is the disease of shame.
The latter has really stuck with me.