What is trauma?

Is it PTSD, ADHD or Autism?

What are the symptoms?

What is EMDR?

How does it work?

Well you’re in for a treat.

Join me before and after an EMDR session,

(Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing)

In this episode I'll be going through all those questions.

What's lovely to see as I've been editing this ,

is the parts of myself

which seem to have been hidden for so long,

finally making their way back to the surface,

my humour and my animated self.

Seeing my free child ego state

emerge to the surface

shows me that we're starting to get somewhere

and see some progress.

I call out some of my Stimming,

things I hid from the world

or hoped people wouldn't see.

I'm deconstructing and highlighting

each bit of myself, bit-by-bit (bits like a computer? Willow?)

to lay all out on the table so you can see it,

identify it and work with it,

just like an engineer.

When we can see all the different pieces,

we can then see how it all fits together,

how it has, and does make you who you are.

It sounds like the after effect of trauma,

it's been defined as a fragmented sense of self,

where parts of yourself breaks away

and you’re no longer cohesive

and when you heal trauma

you pull back all the fragmented parts,

to make yourself whole again.

That kinda feels like what I’m doing.

Which is why this podcast feels so healing for me.

It allows all the parts of myself,

brings them back together

and makes it all ok, one.

Am I just then healing complex trauma?

Interesting.

I think the most valuable part of this podcast

are some of the words my therapist used,

and a phrase from my first year tutor.

My Therapist asked me to put on a graph for EMDR

some memories and the impact level

or how the memories are still affecting me.

I couldn't put down the scores,

I couldn’t ‘get it right’.

She invited me to be compassionate from my body,

she told me that my body didn't have a voice,

and my body only has me to speak for it,

and could I give her the number that my body gave me.

That blew my mind.

That enabled me to access the numbers.

So if you've been struggling

with getting things right for your body,

it only has you to speak for it.

Ask it, and let it, tell you.

And my first year Tutor’s phrase is;

“I know what *xyz* feels like for me,

but so I know what it feels like for you,

can you describe it to me?”

This is really profound because

it highlights that we all experience

the same emotion, but differently.

I've said this from a very young age,

the colour blue we might all call ‘blue’,

but we might see different shades of it.

This is why I think human language is limited,

(getting a bit woo-woo here)

and why the AI machines created a new language,

we are unable to truly understand each other

because we're not like Vision from Marvel or

Avatars where you can show people memories,

of feel their emotions.

Maybe we will get there one day.

But for now, it's important to remember

you can never truly know how someone feels,

because you have not lived their life,

or felt their experiences.

I’ve had a really great feeling about this podcast

I’ve been so excited and terrified at the same time;

opening myself up to so many of you to question, critique, judge,

But I’m excited about how it will help so many of you,

how it will grow,

and where it will take us.

What we will learn and uncover.

I am so grateful to welcome 25 of you!

There are 151 (+5) of you on Spotify 🥹

And 436 (+20) on YouTube.

Gosh, it’s starting to snowball… and I’m ready for it.

Let’s do this together.

From the bottom of my heart,

thank you.

For giving me a place to be me,

be authentic, and for following along my Fumbles,

listening and being on this journey with me,

learning and growing together,

and holding me as ‘OK’.

If you haven’t already done so,

please do ‘Follow’ or ‘Subscribe’

so we can keep this community growing.

As always, see you in the episode!

I’ll trust you to keep yourself OK.

Keep Fumbling Forward,

Frankie

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