Rewiring Resilience: Exploring EMDR for Healing

In this solo episode, join me as I walk you through the eye-opening experience of trying EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing). This structured therapy session allows patients to revisit painful or traumatic memories and alter the way the memory is stored in the brain and body. I talk about how EMDR helped me address certain trauma from my early diagnosis that were left unprocessed.

Join me for a profound reflection on how our unprocessed feelings might be subconsciously affecting the way we move through the world and hindering our emotional and physical healing. The mind-body connection is a truly powerful one, and EMDR is one of many tools that has been found to unlock the barriers to achieving in unlocking the barriers to achieving higher peace.

Episode Highlights

[0:55] What Is EMDR?
[2:00] What Happens During EMDR?
[6:55] Taking a Moment to Breathe
[7:20] Freddie’s Profound Epiphanies About Past Trauma
[10:10] How The Body Remembers and Keeps Trauma Alive
[13:38] Communing with Your Younger Self

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Freddie Kimmel (00:03.309)
Welcome to the Beautifully Broken podcast. I'm your host, Freddie Kimmel, and on the show we explore the survivor's journey, practitioners making a difference, and the therapeutic treatments and transformational technology that allow the body to heal itself. Witness the inspiration we gain by navigating the human experience with grace, humility, and a healthy dose of mistakes, because part of being human is being beautifully broken.

Freddie Kimmel (00:35.096)
Friends, how you doing this morning? We're going to turn on the Riverside and we're going to turn on the Zoom 4. These are the two tools I record on. And this is real and this is raw and this is very fresh for me. But I find that as life unfolds, as opposed to creating content, I will document what I'm feeling and what I'm going through. So right now I'm in the process of working with a therapist. We're looking at some trauma in my history as human beings. We all share this commonality and we're using EMDR.

which is eye movement desensitation and reprocessing. So this is a psychotherapy technique that is primarily used to help individuals who are dealing with traumatic memories and post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. So the method was developed by Francine Shapiro in the late 1980s. And EMDR is based on the idea that negative thoughts or feelings and behaviors are the result of an unprocessed memory. So the process involves

me recalling a very distressful event while simultaneously experiencing a bilateral stimulation. This is typically side to side eye movements guided by a therapist. And the bilateral stimulation is believed to mimic the psychological state of rapid eye movement, REM, in sleep, which is associated with processing and integrating memories. There's a lot to unpack there. So I would like to just say that at home,

What's happening is I am creating a memory and I am watching a screen in which a ball is bouncing left to right. And I'm tracking this with my eyes while I'm allowing my body to unravel what feels like an unraveling of a memory. I'm getting cues and prompts from a therapist. We're working through these memories in a safe way. I feel very safe. There's different things like safe space and

different techniques to down regulate my nervous system. And the process is surrounded by, for me, intense emotional physical releases of stored memories and trauma. And on the other side of the sessions, I feel 10 pounds lighter. It's incredible. And I want to do a whole podcast on EMDR. And that's not why I wanted to record today. I had a podcast episode.

Freddie Kimmel (03:00.437)
It is called, I just looked it up, it is called Hair Loss and Heartbreak in 1996. So this was a podcast in which I walked through what it was like to lose my hair at 18, to start losing my hair at 18. And I wanna frame this for the listeners at home. I will often do solo episodes, I'll walk through the experience of chemotherapy or...

donating sperm before chemotherapy or some of the surgeries I've done. And it's been an incredibly cathartic experience for me to go through and write out what happened and then to actually read it out loud to myself. That's been very healing. So I assumed that I had worked through these and it was a relatively like benign emotion and working with this therapist and doing these very specific scenes, if you will, Scenes from these memories.

It's been incredible to realize and have a deep knowing what is riding on the undercurrent of my nervous system every day. It affects the decisions I make. It affects the relationships I've had. It affects the way in which I respond to people. It affects how effective I am doing what I do. I think one of the most incredible things are that my pain has driven my purpose in a beautiful way. And in spite of

cancer and Lyme and debilitating pain and all these surgeries, I've managed to navigate my way through the world and still do good. And so I'm celebrating myself in this moment. It feels so good to talk about yourself in a loving way. I'm taking a moment to celebrate who I am and celebrate the work that I'm doing.

I hope that doesn't seem silly to anybody. It seems it's kind of giggling with joy. And at the same time, why wouldn't I take a few moments to do this every single day? Ladies and gentlemen, biologicalmedicine.org. Don't go there yet. I have a question for you. Are you tired of standing around in this deep knowing that our healthcare system is broken, but we never do anything about it? Well, biological medicine for practitioners,

Freddie Kimmel (05:19.443)
is the ultimate hybrid online and in-person certification course designed to help you integrate biological medicine or bio-med into your practice. unlike traditional medicine that often focuses on treating symptoms, bio-med treats the whole body, addressing root cause of illness through three pillars, that is detoxification and drainage, nutrition, and immune building. This approach is truly patient-centered,

and yields exceptional results. So in this comprehensive course, you will apply foundational knowledge and hands-on experience with the latest diagnostic technologies and therapies, including bioelectrical impedance analysis, heart rate variability testing, pulse electromagnetic field. I know this sounds like it was created just for Freddie, but this is your chance to become a pioneer in the field of bio med.

This is for healthcare and wellness professionals, all the way from doctors to personal trainers. I want you to go to biologicalmedicine.org and look for the enroll now button. And if you use code beautifullybroken, you'll receive the intro to biological medicine for free. That's a $200 value. Friends, let's go do this. This is our time to seize the day. Join the biomed.

and help create a real paradigm shift in the way we deliver results for our patients. Let's do this.

You and I share a commonality. We have made it through 100 % of our most difficult days. So I would like to do a breath with you. Let's breathe in for four.

Freddie Kimmel (07:12.67)
Out for four.

Freddie Kimmel (07:17.175)
Hand on your heart. I love you. So this specific memory, I had some profound epiphanies.

I'm gonna take you to that scene in which I was 1996. I'm 18 years old. I am so excited to not only be in college, but to be starting my life. I'm in a school that has a great training program for music theater and the vocal arts and acting, which I'm very passionate about, SUNY Fredonia. And I'm even cast in some shows right away and just everything feels so good.

And I had a day where I got out of the shower one day and for context, I had this long, beautiful blonde hair, just like Brad Pitt. Beautiful. Like think legends of the fall, Brad Pitt. And I combed through my hair and I just had this big clump of hair come out in the comb. And it was a moment of shock and trauma and fear. And if you want to listen to the whole episode, which I won't go into, you should. It's Hair Loss and Heartbreak in 1996.

hair loss and heartbreak in 1996. And the reality was the pain and the suffering. I didn't allow myself to feel sadness in that moment. I felt shame. I was filled with fear and a lot of self-loathing came up in re-examining this memory through EMDR. And what I was able to do

is see that frame, that still frame, and go talk to that version of myself and work out the maladaptive response. It was incredible. So for years and years and years, at every dinner table, at every party, at every concert, I had this incredible sense of self-loathing about how I looked, my physical appearance, and the loss of the hair, that physical appearance to me,

Freddie Kimmel (09:29.357)
It meant that my dreams would never come true, that I would never be a Broadway performer, that I was never gonna be a leading man, that everything that I dreamed of was taken away from me and it was out of my control and I couldn't fix it. I prayed and prayed and prayed I could fix it. Now, I know that may seem silly to some people, but at 18, it was my world and I didn't talk to anybody about it. I didn't reach out for help. I just...

held the shame in my tissues that was 18 years old. At 21 years old, I woke up one morning with full body rheumatoid arthritis and pain. And at 26 years old, I was diagnosed with cancer. In this EMDR therapy, I felt the weight and I felt the suffering and I felt the pain. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my body had parked those feelings in my tissue. And that's why I struggled with chronic illness.

That's why I got cancer. That's why I'm a perfect terrain or I'm a perfect field for Lyme disease. And I got to make that repair. In this 40 minute session, I got to go in and work with my 18 year old self and my 46 year old self had to have a conversation. We got to have a conversation. My psyche, my mental, emotional intuition got to repair that maladaptive response.

And in that 18 year old self, I got to go around and I got to tell people that I was sad. I got to tell my suitemates that I was hurting. I got to tell my girlfriend at the time, Olivia, how heartbroken and how I felt these incredible feelings of less than and lack and self loathing. And then it has nothing to do with her.

But these were the feelings. And everybody in this memory, they had also grown up and they were compassionate and they hugged me and they allowed me to cry. We went in the sweet room and we, my freshmen sweet room, we cried together and they were empathetic and they were kind and they listened. I never entertained the idea that that could have happened at that time, that I could have shared how much

Freddie Kimmel (11:55.756)
I was holding in my body and I kept it inside. Now maybe they would, maybe people would have said, Freddie, you're being silly. Maybe they would have made fun of me for the hair loss, which was my worst fear. Maybe they would have not wanted to be friends with me. Maybe my girlfriend would have broke up with me, but I don't know. And I choose to create a story and I lived it out without anybody else's participation. So I created my reality. But the fact that in this session I could go back and,

When I made that repair, when I told people what I was feeling, when I shared my hurt, I was allowed to feel sadness. And I had these incredible waves of crying and grief and shaking. Muscles in my chest and my back and my jaw started to shake and release. And then through a safe process of stepping down and continuing the conversation with Freddie's 18 year old self and my 46 year old self,

I integrated those two bodies and the memory doesn't hold the same charge. And right after the session, it's been my guidance and instruction to go move my body in a gentle, soft way. put on some nice Trevor Hall and I do some yoga, some gentle movement, and I integrate that experience. And I'm telling you, I stepped outside and the colors are different. I stepped outside and the sunshine.

hit my arm and there was a deep warming and I was like, have I ever felt the sun in that way? Everything changed in 45 minutes and this continues to be my experience. So A, I love to share. B, I had this incredible epiphany that that 18 year old self that thought he was robbed of his dreams and his goals and everything that was beautiful that he wanted. My 46 year old self got to tell him, Freddy,

You were in the Broadway tour of Phantom of the Opera. Freddie, you've started a hit podcast. You have almost 200 episodes. Freddie, you speak all over the world and so many people have reached out to you and said, thank you for what you do. You've inspired me. I'm a better human being because of me hearing your message. Freddie, you've moved through metastatic cancer, Lyme disease. You're incredibly on a level of incredible functionality.

Freddie Kimmel (14:22.153)
You have an amazing job. You're surrounded with amazing friends. You've had incredible relationships. You traveled the world. And the 18 year old, the 18 year old, again, he was crying with joy because the things I got to tell him, they were beyond anything he could have imagined.

It was such a beautiful experience. And I wish for you the de-burdening or the letting go of what you carry around. So I think I'm complete. I hope this finds you well. I hope you are finding a way to move through life with ease and grace and calling in these learning experiences with that timbre. Lessons from the universe with ease and grace.

I love you so much. This is the Beautifully Broken Podcast. I'll speak with you soon. Bye.

Freddie Kimmel (15:24.768)
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