EMDR Blew My Mind. Literally.

I was stuck. That is to say my brain was stuck in a recurring PTSD loop. I couldn't get the image of my car crash out of my head. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't function. Then a friend suggested EMDR.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned—in a footnote, so you might have missed it—that I was about to seek out the care of an EMDR specialist to deal with the lingering post traumatic stress I was experiencing from my car crash. What did that PTSD look like? It looked like a woman who couldn’t sleep, drive, or function due to the constantly intruding image of that black Land Rover running a stop sign, turning my windshield from light to dark like a shutter closing, followed by the sounds and crushing pain of impact.

“I need help,” I told a friend, who’d lived through the trauma of losing her daughter in a car accident several years ago. I remembered her telling me about a specialist she and her husband saw in the wake of that tragedy, if only to get them through the day without screaming. I also remembered her telling me how surprised she was when it actually worked.

Her specialist is no longer practicing in the area, she said, but she knew someone else who was equally excellent. “Call Dr. Patricia Tidwell,” she told me. “EMDR will change your life.”