In this Podcast episode, I talk with Liliana Hernandez about trauma, EMDR and the Trauma Erase Method. Here’s a partial transcript. Click the play button above to hear the whole conversation (and get to know me a bit more). You can listen for free.
Working With Trauma As Long As Bessel van der Kolk
Liliana Hernandez:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for asking about that. So tell us. Tell us a little about what you’re doing, what you’re into, because we could sit here and talk for hours about trauma for sure.
Tamara Ridge:
Yes, for sure. So what am I doing? I am currently choosing to put my life first because there’s a thing that happens in social media where if you want to promote the work that you do, somebody said somewhere that you’ve got to spend all this time doing all these social media and being everywhere and I’m not doing that anymore. So I’m enjoying my life. What am I doing in a work situation?
I’m a therapist. I’m a really good therapist. And I came from a background of a lot of trauma and got licensed in 2001, but finished school in… started in 1995, finished in 1997. And back in the 1997s, you’ve heard of Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps Before he hadn’t even published that yet. There was not a lot of information about trauma when I became a therapist.
And honestly, to tell you the truth, I became a therapist so I could heal my mommy issues, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew that I wanted to help people heal trauma and I wanted it to be more than what I had experienced. Disappointing, frustrating, I’m sure being labeled with labels that don’t fit a healing journey. And so I wanted to find something that worked.
So over the course of years, I discovered a way to heal triggers that happen in trauma. And I discovered it by figuring it out. When I was triggered, the first thing I realized was that my trauma brain played tricks on me. So when I was a really little girl, I was mauled by an Australian Shepherd, she and my grandmother’s dog. And that made me afraid of dogs until I was 30.
And the reason it stopped when I was 30 is because I used to go out on walks with my pockets full of rocks so I could defend myself if I ever needed to. Because I believed that I was dog food. So if a dog saw me, there’s the dog food; it will come and eat me no matter where the dog is. So I would prepare myself. Well, I came around the corner after a walk and right there, I’m already six feet tall. I’m a tall woman.
Liliana Hernandez:
Yes, you’re tall.
Tamara Ridge:
Yes. Right there in front of me a chihuahua on the same sidewalk. He wants to go the other way, and I’m going this opposite way, and my house is right there. But it stopped me in my tracks, and I was so scared. I was so scared. And the chihuahua finally, because he was showing his teeth and the fur on his back was standing up.
He finally started making a big circle around me and I thought, oh, that’s smart. I’m going to face you until we’re on the opposite of each other. And then he went his way and I went into my house and went, what just happened? I felt five, I’m 30. That was the first moment that I went, wait a minute, my brain is playing tricks on me. This dog’s no bigger than my foot. There’s no way it’s going to hurt me. But I was five just now.
The Trauma Erase Method
So I started doing lots of exploring and lots of very deep really study about my own trauma. And at the same time I was seeing clients who also had lots of trauma. It doesn’t take very long for us to see that clients have trauma, wouldn’t have to scratch the surface very far. And so I developed, over the course of time, I developed a process called the Trauma Erase Method. And it’s different than anything that’s out there in the field right now. And so I very casually now promote the Trauma Erase Method. I teach people how to heal trauma online using an online course that has everything I know about trauma in lessons and video.
And then I sit with them two times a week on Wednesday night and on Saturday morning and answer questions. And we talk at a deep level in a group format about healing trauma and what it’s like working through this process. And the community is called Trauma Free Nation and they learn the Trauma Erase Method there. So, that’s my heart work. And then on the side, no, that’s my side heart work and my real regular work is a therapist and discovering and really enjoying the results that people get with EMDR as well.
How does EMDR therapy work?
Liliana Hernandez:
You’re doing EMDR as well?
Tamara Ridge:
Mm-hmm.
Liliana Hernandez:
Tell us a little bit about EMDR, and can you do me a favor and just for anybody that’s like trauma, how do you define trauma?
Tamara Ridge:
Well, trauma is an event or an event that’s known to you because somebody else experienced it that’s close to you, that makes you feel helpless and is a threat to life or wellbeing. So we have childhood trauma as well. So we think about what children need developmentally. They need physical safety, emotional safety, food and shelter. All of those things. When those things aren’t in place, a child really does feel threats and it threatens their personality development. So childhood trauma is more subtle, so there’s that and those are little T traumas that happen over and over again across day to day activities in life.
Liliana Hernandez:
You call those little T traumas?
Tamara Ridge:
Yeah, because they’re the tiny little things that happen day to day. And then there’s big T traumas, which are a car accident or I lost my aunt in September 11th, 2001 at Pentagon for example. That’s a big T trauma. So trauma is anything that threatens our sense of wellbeing or our life where we have a sense of helplessness and tends to live in our body and what I call the trauma brain. And when any little tiny reminders of the trauma shows up in our day to day, we feel the same way or we act like we did during the trauma. We have behaviors and patterns in our life today that are repeated because our trauma brain stores it and keeps us on vigilant watch for anything that might be similar.
Liliana Hernandez:
Thank you for explaining that. I love that because differentiating between little Ts and big trauma is completely different and one is sort of layered over time and the other was impactful in the moment.
Tamara Ridge:
The big T traumas are often easier to get over because they’re discreet period of time. Big T traumas are often something that happens once and it’s done, although it can live in your body, but it’s easier to heal that than it is childhood trauma because of the layering that happens in childhood trauma.
Liliana Hernandez:
And I think that’s definitely something to keep in mind, the layering. So that we could talk about that even later because I want you to talk to us about EMDR. Tell us a little bit about what that is and what does that look like in the actual therapy room?
Tamara Ridge:
EMDR is amazing and I do it remotely, which is incredible too. Yeah, I do it remotely. I have some software that I used to do it remotely. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. And it was discovered by Francine Shapiro in the eighties. And she was actually strolling in a park and thinking about something that was bothering her and she was watching something that was making her eyes go back and forth. And she noticed that as she did that, her emotional response to the thing that was bothering her decreased.
And that’s how it started. So part of my training to become an EMDR therapist meant that I had to participate in EMDR therapy. So I have it from both sides, experience from both sides. And the way I explain it to clients is that when we have trauma, our brain kind of sequesters it to part of our brain where it doesn’t really get in the way of our regular activities. We’re not in the terror, we’re not in the fear. Yes, behaviors might show up, there might be little things that leak through, but we kind of put it away and don’t process those emotions. And when those unprocessed emotions get triggered, that’s when we get into the trauma behaviors and it can be anything. So I’m just realizing that with the work that I’ve been doing, I’m not realizing that right now. I’m looking at that in my practice, people who have trouble reaching peak performance can use EMDR therapy.
So any bad habit that we have or anything where we’re saying, yes, this is a trauma or depression or anxiety, anything where we have a behavior that we don’t like, we want to change, whether that’s procrastination or fear, anxiety, can’t sleep. It goes across the whole gamut because all of those things, we can always go back to a root memory. That root memory is a thing that was sequestered. So when we do the EMDR therapy, it’s a combination of bilateral stimulation is what we call it, where the eyes get moved back and forth. Also, my system has where it also has sounds that goes with it. You could have tappers, we could be doing an EMDR session and I can control your tappers with my software. So it’s almost just like being in person. But it’s the bilateral stimulation that somehow opens up the tracks, if you want to call it that, to the sequestered memory and makes available details, emotions, different understanding. And when you can understand it and get perspective, then it’s much easier to allow it to heal.
Liliana Hernandez:
So how many sessions would you say normally it takes or does it vary from trauma to trauma?
Tamara Ridge:
It varies. So people who’ve had really extensive trauma, it can take months of therapy. Because what happens is traumas, there’s a core trauma, but the rest of the traumas that are somehow associated, the little T traumas make a spider web. And so there are all of these legs of the spider web that we can heal a specific memory and then it will trigger another memory. And that other memory is also distressing. So then we have to go and process that until you’ve got a cluster that kind of fall apart. I’ll tell you from the experiencing it side, when we were doing EMDR training, I knew that I had been runover by a flatbed truck when I was almost two. I knew that, right? From family stories, I knew it.
Liliana Hernandez:
Did this happen?
Tamara Ridge:
I was run over, my dad run me over with the flatbed truck when I was two.
And some of my work I had done, I discovered that it injured my diaphragm and I have pain still. It caused a real injury that I still have now. I have a paralyzed diaphragm on my right side because of that injury. And I was doing some somatic work and doing my own processing before I went to the EMDR training. And there was one morning where I was kind of lying in bed, curled up, noticing the pain, and I had a body memory. And I remembered being in bed at that little tiny age and thinking, I can’t trust my parents. And however a two year old does it, but having the same pain and knowing. So I knew that much, but I didn’t know more. And I thought, there have to be emotions connected here. This has to have something. So we started doing EMDR on that in just one training session.
I remembered being able to reach up to the screen door. I remembered having a very intense need for a sense of belonging with my mother who was very unable to attach with me when I was an infant. And so my mom and dad were on the driveway. Dad was in the truck. Mom was at the car window, at the truck window. They were goodbye-ing.
Liliana Hernandez:
This is your memory during this?
Tamara Ridge:
Yes. I didn’t remember it before, but right? They’re goodbye-ing and I have this incredible sense of need to belong and want when I’m seeing them being affectionate to each other. Cause I’m not getting that as a kid. So I walk outside, I go behind the back of the flatbed truck, but the bumper hits me in the head, knocks me to the ground. And the rest is history. I did not remember that before. And so as it was happening, it was funny because during EMDR, you give your client a signal, like a hand signal or a timeout signal so that they can stop it at any time during the processing if it feels too much. And so I’m big crying, I’m processing and I’m big crying. And the other person who’s training with me is a brand new therapist not even licensed.
Liliana Hernandez:
Because you guys are practicing on each other.
Tamara Ridge:
We’re practicing on each other. So I’m doing this big crying and I have enough awareness to know that I can hold myself while I’m crying. And that’s okay that’s how healing happens. But she’s freaking out.
Liliana Hernandez:
Oh my goodness!
Tamara Ridge:
So she called the facilitator in and the facilitator and her are talking about what to do. And I don’t remember her name, but I said, “I didn’t give you a timeout signal.” And she goes, “Oh.” So we went back in and processed it and it was very interesting. The cry was very, very cathartic. I was a person who was crying very frequently in my relationship and day to day life, I was crying a lot. At least once a week, maybe two times a week. And just saying, that’s kind of who I am. I cry. Stopped after the EMDR.
Liliana Hernandez:
Oh my goodness!
Tamara Ridge:
Yeah.
Liliana Hernandez:
God. What connections did you make to that then? You were crying? Not in general, obviously over something emotional. You have EMDR and that stops or pauses or it takes a different venue. What’s the connection?
Tamara Ridge:
So that, I’ll tell you, that EMDR session was in December last year. And I’ve probably cried three times since then. And it’s because we’re traveling and sometimes traveling and doing all this work and moving every few weeks is hard. What changed in me is that after the EMDR session, I realized that I had this sense of need for belonging and need for security that could never be met, even though I’m in a very wonderful, secure relationship, but that need could never be met. So I was always self-conscious and always scared. So my partner could raise an eyebrow and I’d be crying. I was constantly afraid. After the EMDR session, my parents, and I realized this during the process. My mom was 18 and my dad was 19. They were stupid kids. The dog mauling that happened when I was five was neglect.
Who leaves a two year old baby inside in an unlocked house by themselves to go out saying goodbye? That’s neglect as well. But I realized during the EMDR session, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t something defective about me that I couldn’t be loved by my mom or my dad. My dad never protected me. My mom was just very cruel. So I realized during that EMDR session that they were really kind of stupid kids, neglectful, and this was not me. So the EMDR session helps to pull back. So instead of being in a movie, you’re watching a movie. And it also separates the emotion from it. So I could see the context and go, Oh yes, I was a very innocent baby. My mom and dad had their problems. And that was the issue, not being me, not being lovable. So the not crying since December to now, has everything to do with me being secure and being a lovable human, where that was missing before I did the EMDR session on that early experience.
Liliana Hernandez:
Good. Thank you for sharing that, Tamara. That is amazing. Just that experience. And mind you, I’ve had a couple of sessions myself. I can definitely understand the bits and pieces of processing parts. And for me, there was a sense of relief afterwards. One thing for me was the memory was often there because it was something that happened later on in life that the memory just no longer lives in my frontal, It doesn’t live above my eyebrows basically, is what I’d like to say.
[Full interview can be heard by clicking the button on the image at the top of the page. It will take you to Spotify where you can listen for free.]
I encourage you to contact me if you are considering online EMDR therapy. I provide online treatment in California and work with Alma to cover your sessions when Optum or Aetna insures you.
If you have a PPO insurance policy, I work with a company called Advekit that will bill insurance for you, so you never have to worry about sending out-of-network invoices for reimbursement – all you pay is your co-insurance once your deductible is met!
Interested in a supportive group education/discussion about successfully participating in a relationship with a survivor of childhood trauma?
Or . . .
Wondering how I can help you heal from childhood trauma even if you don’t live in California or cannot afford individual therapy?
Take a look at my calendar and book a 15-minute chat and we’ll talk about options for healing.
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