Betty's Brainwork

Eye Movement and Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) Resetting Cicuits Session: 

This is a guided meditation therapy I participated in where it feels and looks like lucid dreaming. 

Anger:

“What does anger look like?”

I see a human form with an open mouth, wrinkled forehead, eyebrows pointed downward,  and arms tensed out beside the body with clenched fists. A red sunburst aura is surrounding and covering this figure while a sunbeam of red is coming out of the open mouth. The form manipulates its body to look like a tea pot and like the nursery rhyme “tips me over and pours out” the red aura. It becomes liquid form and pours into an empty glass coke bottle. The form drinks half of the liquid, and leaves the rest in the bottle, then angrily throws the bottle.  Glass shatters…shards everywhere. I assume the form is me at this point because I think about picking up the glass and cutting someone with it. I realize this is demented and unhealthy, so I decide to piece the bottle back together. Once glass is broken, sometimes the tiny shards are so broken or turn into a glass powder. I can’t completely piece the bottle back together because of this. I glue the bottle together the best that I can, but holes are still in the bottle. I spit, like a fountain, more red liquid into the bottle; however, the holes in the bottle cause the red liquid to pour out into a tiny stream. I follow this stream to my house where Doc and Jesse are. The stream flows to my mom’s house too. In real life, my calves tense up and my toes twitch. I think my eyes are open. I ask “Are my eyes open because all I see is black?”

“No.”

I see the word “No.” The word flips and mirrors itself and now it says “On.” This reminds me of a light switch. The image changes from an up and down light switch to a four sided light switch. It moves up and down and side to side which reminds me of a joystick or a stick shift in car. I’m now driving with Jesse, Doc, and my mom in the back seat. I’m in control. I drive them home. I turn on the radio and get distracted by a black spot I see. I see this in real life too even though my eyes are closed. I follow the black spot and it grows. Black spreads across my eyes. All I see is black.

Fear:

“What does fear look like?”

A ghost. …a dragon ghost… a ghost beside my bed when I was kid. I had this re-occurring dream of that as a kid. I have a vivid imagination. I remember getting scared a lot as a kid in bed at night. I would call for my parents. My dad would come and reassure me nothing was there except me and him.

I’m thinking about my grandmother being alone. I fear that.

 He would usually sit by me on my bed and wait until I fell asleep. Fear is being alone. This is related to my recent moving. I’m afraid of leaving those I love behind. I’m not alone. The relationships I make with people are forever in my heart, and if I’m lucky, they are just a plane ride away.”

 Fear now looks like someone who is overwhelmed. They are a tiny person, like Polly Pocket, in a big world that is towering over them.

The person is growing larger and larger while the once engulfing world is becoming smaller and smaller. Earth is now the size of a marble and sits in the hand of the admiring giant. The giant takes the tiny marble of the earth; put it in their pocket, and floats away into the dark void of space…like a ghost.

Panic:

"What does panic look like?" 

I see someone running. Nothing is around them; the mise-en-scene is a black void. It’s like they are running to nothing. I join them.  We aren’t running full-paced; it’s more like a light jog. I start to question “Why am I running? and “What are we running from?” I remember that I hate running. I tell the person next to me, “Hey, I hate running.” We both start laughing. The syncopated rhythms that were previously jogging morph into dancing. Now we are dancing and laughing instead of running. 

Sadness:

" What does sadness look like?" 

I see a genderless, long, skinny, pale face with translucent skin, black buttons for eyes, and a black open mouth. The face is elongated and continues to ooze itself in a downward stretch. It’s trippy because it keeps morphing itself to small and then long again while also turning counter clockwise. The face gets long again opens the mouth and vomits. The vomit is green, and I take my hands and begin scraping through the vomit to see what I can find. I see white pills, red flower petals, and a pom pom. I pick up one of the pom-poms and put it on the head of the face that is sadness. The pom-pom turns into hair and starts to grow long like the face. I take a piece of the hair and wrap it around both button eye to pop them off. I eat the buttons. I realize the face no longer has eyes. I pull out my own eyes and put them on the face. I hold up a mirror, similar to the magical mirror on Beauty and the Beast, and it’s a double sided mirror. I’m really looking at myself. The mirror begins to stretch itself into a needle and thread.  I’m holding thread all of the sudden. Was it the piece of hair? I run my fingers down the thread, and I feel several knots in the thread. My body starts to lengthen like a piece of thread. I try to push myself head first through the head of the needle. I look at the lower half of my body and see that just the lower half is thread; however, it’s not thread anymore. It’s my guts…my intestines. I’m starring at the puke and my guts and wondering what to do with it.  

* We ran out of session time on this one...to be continued.*