The Insight Queen

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of months now and am finally getting around to it. Work has been rocking, and just so busy. It’s going well, especially with this new love stuff that we’ve been doing. So I’m working at a totally unsustainable rate, but it feels okay for now. After a while maybe I’ll raise rates and focus more on spirituality. It feels good to keep spreading this stuff as much as I can for now, though. Anyway, here it is, the story of The Insight Queen. It shows how fast connections can be made using EMDR as opposed to just talking. Enjoy!

So I have a client that I’ve called the “Insight Queen” because of the ridiculous insights she’s had the two very brief times we’ve done EMDR. They’ve come so fast that it’s just ludicrous. It’s like we’re thinking maybe we’re done for the day, maybe not. And I’ll say, “Why don’t we just turn the machine on one more time to see if anything else comes up?” And then a minute or two later, some huge insight about her life pops in. So I wanted to share some of them with you so you can get an idea of what can happen when we “drop in” and get out of the way, allowing the mind to open up. My experience from doing EMDR for a few months now is that this is a way different animal than just talking about stuff. Way different.

I wrote about her first EMDR session here, when she realized that her life was very difficult for a young kid, so she had to put a wall up and be tough. And she’s seeing now that she made it, she survived, and that it’s time to lower the wall. “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” A little 80’s nostalgia for some of you… The wall absolutely served a purpose, but she’s outgrown the need for it. And it might even be keeping good things away. Remember from the previous post that she had a vision in meditation about everything she wanted being held at bay by a bubble emanating from her. That’s the wall. And from our subsequent session, now she knows exactly when she put it up and why. And now she is allowing it to come down. We’ll see what happens as her life goes forward, allowing the wall to come down. Because that was a really cool vision that she had!

She also realized she was a “bad kid” because as a very young girl, she learned to associate bad things happening with getting her mom’s attention. It was a very old memory that popped in (written about in the linked post above), and this insight was clear as day. Wow. She also realized that everyone else in the household was trying to get the same thing – attention and love from her mom. So it explained how they all acted, including her dad! And this realization, along with remembering that he had been abused as a child, explained his heavy drinking. She also saw that wow, one person (her mom) can totally dominate an entire family. And she saw that her mom had lots of junk from her own childhood that she hadn’t dealt with and that she kept just passing on. So she thought, “Deal with your stuff; don’t poison everyone else! That’s not okay!” But she has the insight now to see exactly why all of this happened. It’s no longer a mystery, and that helps us come to acceptance and peace much faster. And trust me, she’s in the process of coming to acceptance and peace. And it’s happening fast.

Now here’s the deal, and this is why I’m writing this post about The Insight Queen. ALL OF THAT HAPPENED IN TEN OR FIFTEEN MINUTES. Let that sink in. All of that happened in ten or fifteen minutes. It’s like dog years, it really is. That amount of insight would most likely take a long time doing talk therapy, if it even happened at all. Not fifteen minutes, anyway, no way. Not even close! And she simply put some headphones on, held some vibrating pulsers in her hands, closed her eyes, and dropped in. Wow. And seriously, we’d think we were done and I’d say let’s go for another minute or two just to check. And then bam, another life changing revelation would pop in. And we were seriously laughing, because it was so ridiculous. And then why don’t we drop in just one more time? And then bam, something else. I couldn’t help but laugh, and neither could she. That jaw-dropping, mind blown kind of laughter. Feels so good!

In our second EMDR session, we targeted something but nothing was coming up. So we shifted to another target, something else in her life that was bothering her. And bam, an old memory floated right up. And this led to the insight that she’s always played small because then her mom couldn’t chop her down. Her mom was very insecure, you see. Okay, she seems like a very evil witch, to be honest. And I’m helping to get rid of this very strong conditioning that my client is so tired of. And she is so amazing! If you only knew, you’d be astonished. She is a truly amazing person, in so many ways. But this conditioning started early, and it’s strong. But we’re breaking that sh*t down! And it’s such an honor and a joy to be part of it. Because it is time.

So this amazing person has been playing small her whole life, not thinking it was okay to truly let her soul shine. And that’s because her totally insecure mom would bash her anytime she did something good. That’s messed up! Again, deal with your stuff and don’t pass it on! This sounds like a big realization for five minutes, right? Five minutes?!? So I suggested we drop in again, because why not? Let’s just see.

So she closed her eyes and dropped in, and what came up? An old memory where she learned that feeling her feelings is not okay. For instance, crying is not okay. When she was in pain in the hospital as a young girl after a surgical procedure, her mom told her in a cold voice, “You’re embarrassing me.” Are you kidding me? This was a young girl in pain in a hospital. And she learned in that moment that feeling was not okay. Until now. Thank heavens! So you can see that was a powerful two minutes, dropping in again. Two minutes?!? This little EMDR machine is amazing!

So we could’ve been done, but again, I said why not try once more? So she closed her eyes again, and a memory floated up of being left at a gas station as a child. On a family trip. With a family that’s not very big. Left at a gas station! She came out of the gas station, maybe with a candy bar and a soda, and she could see the family vehicle driving away, getting back on the highway. No cell phones, no clue what to do. They left me??? So she realized she was always trying to be seen, especially by her mom. She’s always wanted to be seen for who she is, loved for who she is, and allowed to be who she is. And that never happened. Until now. 

We are getting rid of the gunk from all of this – that’s the ‘D’ in EMDR, Desensitization. We’re clearing this gunk, this old energy, out of her system once and for all. And underneath the gunk is our natural wisdom, fresh insight. Clarity. Strength. And often compassion, too. And a good, spacious feeling. By reading this post, can you get a sense of how powerful this way of doing therapy – or growth – can be? It’s about NOT thinking through things in a really verbal, intellectual way, but rather getting out of the way. Letting the mind chill out and relax so we can see what wants to float up naturally. And again, each of these major realizations only took a few minutes!

Now, I don’t write about this for anyone else to compare themselves to her. I just want you to know what’s possible. Many other clients, though, have had experiences similar to this, in the short time that I’ve been doing this EMDR stuff. They’re just making connections so fast that would not be made by talking. Not nearly that quickly, anyway. Not even close! I’m so blown away, and so are they. But I had to tell the tale of The Insight Queen, because it’s just on a different level of ridiculousness. Things happened comically fast. Every few minutes something earth-shattering would pop up, and it would further explain her life. As my EMDR teacher says, “Now my life makes sense.

So there you go, folks! I hope you’re enjoying these tales, because I sure am enjoying sharing them with you. And I send you love and peace and all that, and I’ll receive it myself as well. As always, let me know if I can help. But I can say for the first time now that I’m so busy that the scheduling is getting tough! And we’re now well into year six of this gig. It took a LOT longer than I thought to get this busy, so I’m thankful for it now. And hopefully it’ll motivate me to finally get to putting all of this into concise book form and/or online program. I’m just letting it unfold now, but I know this EMDR stuff is a big part of the process. I have such a deep desire to bring stuff together into sort of a “unified theory” of peace for any human. And I have to chill out on that some, too, so I’ll work on that. Chilling out, me, good luck with that… Peace out!