I Had EMDR Yesterday.

But I Have My Doubts. And That's Okay.

Dear Readers,

I don’t quite know where to begin with this one — but maybe I just write how I’m feeling.

I remember how fatigued my eyes were as I stepped out of my psychologist’s office yesterday. This was my second experience with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and with a new practitioner — a woman whose voice carries that resplendent, soft-spoken tone that makes you feel as though she’s physically incapable of raising it above a whisper. The kind of voice that suggests safety.

It’s strange, too, how a form of psychotherapy I hadn’t even heard of until earlier this year has become a core part of what I now hope might be a route — if not to salvation, then at least to stillness. EMDR asks you to return to the scene of the crime. Not literally. Not even narratively. But neurologically. You sit in a chair, track a sound or a movement, and revisit the moment your body forgot how to feel safe.

For me, those moments are many. Too many. Some of you already know about the flashbacks. The math tutor. The room that should have been ordinary but wasn’t. But those who know me more intimately know that my body has been asked to survive much more than that. Sometimes I grow weary — profoundly weary — of the sexual trauma I’ve endured. Not least of all rape. And while I refuse to be consumed by the rage I carry for the "men" who inflicted this on me, I do hope they meet their judgment — in this realm or the next.

At times I look at my own history and feel a distinct sense that I’ve outlived versions of myself no one ever even met. And sometimes I wonder if the diagnosis — PTSD — isn’t simply a long-winded way of saying: you lived through it, but not without consequence.

There is a ritual to EMDR that I find both precise and unnerving. You are asked to remember — not with language, but with sensation. With breath. With twitch. With the almost imperceptible way your jaw locks when a memory enters before your mind has caught up. There’s no crescendo. No cathartic release. No Oprah-style epiphany. And perhaps that’s what makes it so confronting. It doesn’t feel like healing. It feels like accounting. Emotional bookkeeping. You sit there, making a ledger of everything that ever came undone.

It is graphic. And intimate. I remember, vividly, the smell of the petroleum Vaseline that man used before he pinned me down. That smell was a lethal reminder. But I kept my eyes locked on the oscillating light, braving the humiliation, bearing my psychologist’s steady gaze as she asked me questions anchored in sensation, memory, and feeling.

I wish I could tell you the session was transcendent. That I discovered a portal into some new dimension of my being. That healing arrived like a parade. But I can’t. What I can tell you is this: when I walked home, I noticed the sound of my shoes on the pavement. I noticed a child crying somewhere above me in a nearby building. I noticed — quite simply — that I was still in my body. Which is something. Maybe even everything.

And here’s the thing about doubt: it isn’t the enemy of healing. Sometimes it’s the prerequisite. I don’t trust anything that asks me to believe in it blindly. My pain has earned its skepticism. So yes — I have my doubts. And that’s okay. Doubt, I’m learning, is its own kind of vigilance. A way of asking the question, again and again: Is it safe yet?

In 2021, my friend Willemijn Cerutti produced a film called Jason, about a boy confronting his demons through EMDR. She invited me to dinner in Zandvoort — the 123rd gathering of The Last Supper Project — and over a plate of this fantastic grape burrata dish (Ottolenghi style), we discussed the making of that film. I intend to finally watch it now, through the prism of this unfolding experience. Perhaps it will offer a perspective that will help me chart my own.

I have another session next week. I remain open. But I am terrified of what this process might unearth. I hold space for that fear — imperfectly, but honestly.

Healing, I’m learning, doesn’t always arrive with clarity. Sometimes it comes in fragments. A calmer breath. A skipped flashback. A meal that stays down. A night without dreams. You collect those moments like sea glass. Hold them up to the light. And continue.

With love,
Joseph

grape burrata dish from Dinner 123 of The Last Supper Project, 1 of 2 dishes served.