Screen Processing

[Blueberry]

Since a couple of people have asked, I'll finally attempt to describe what my therapist does with me instead of EMDR. Maybe somebody'll jump up and say 'I know that too!! In English it's called...'

This is imagination work. In my imagination I place a big empty screen on the wall, then I add a picture frame on top of the screen. I describe the picture frame in detail and then I reduce it in size, in my case it's usually to about the size of a postage stamp. Then I describe what I see in the picture frame or mention who I see. If there's a problem e.g. the picture frame is not staying on the screen or it keeps enlargening or the person in it is climbing out, then I imagine barriers and helpers. Barriers can be e.g. bullet-proof glass and my helpers just turned up in my imagination. When they first come, it's important to describe them out loud. I mean, it's not so crazy, my therapist was asking me all this as I went along. 

The next step is to describe whatever it is that is connecting me to the picture in the picture frame. It can be an iron pipe or a concrete cylinder or an incredibly long blade of grass or .... And then the important step destroy the connection. This can be a magical solution, occasionally the connection has simply fallen apart when my therapist has mentioned. More often than not it's difficult. Cut it, it springs back together etc etc Sometimes I do it, sometimes one or more of the helpers do it. Sometimes I start out, and then the helpers come with extra tools or new ideas.

Once my therapist agreed with my helpers (so with my intuition) that we should leave the connection there just with reduced diameter because retaining caution around my M is good for me. The panic can go, that's fine, but caution - that's good to have around certain people.

The final step is to see if there's anything I need to heal my physical body. I mean I'll have just finished cutting or burning or shattering a huge tube or pipe connecting my chest to the picture frame. Sometimes it's good to rub some burn ointment on, or for a particular one of my helpers to come and place her angel wings around me.

Once we even had a small Inner Child in the room with us. She stayed as far away as possible from the Screen, but she wanted to be there not sent away, and my T said she should be allowed to stay. This was new for me! And so after the work itself I spent time with her.

Screen work is also used to help people describe just what happened and distance themselves from it. Before my therapist started it with me, I'd read about it - imagining a TV and a remote control so you learn control over the films in your head. You can stop it when you like, make it black and white, change channels etc etc. I'd never read that you could use single shots the way my T does with me or that you can use it to process emotions.

Recently my therapist even said that we're only processing a bit with Screen Processing. The real objective is to de-fuse the emotions so that I'm not so overcome with them that I can hardly speak, breathe, move, act.
There is more to write here, partly it's a realisation that has just come up, which I don't feel capable of expressing in any form right now.

However a note of caution: it may sound easy when you read my explanation, but it isn't. Don't try this at home on your own! Tons of emotions came up, and even now when I occasionally do it at home, as I'm meant to be doing, to learn how for when I don't have therapy any more, I come up against things that I don't know what to do with.

[Blueberry]

Yesterday in T we did something new with Screen Work. I imagined an image of myself in the picture frame doing something in the future. (At T's suggestion of course.).

We also spent most of the hour with the screen up on the wall. Sometimes we were working indirectly with it. My T definitely 'took me places' that I wouldn't have managed on my own.

[woodsgnome]

Thanks for sharing that, Blueberry. Visualizations in general are probably considered 'unreal' to many (whatever 'real' is supposed to be), but having done quite a few myself I don't care; they are powerful takes on what is some very freaky territory in one's psyche. Some of mine are spontaneous replays of dream material, and some are along what you've described but perhaps not always as thorough; with the helpers and connectors for instance (good idea though!--next time I can bring my realistic eagle puppet representing my totem animal).

We've used a screen setup as well, but divided into 2 movies--the old and new. I sometimes do a similar process of trying to fit me into the new movie. This can be hard to do; as I have a tendency to refer back to the old--bad as it was, at least it was something I knew and can react to (if it doesn't snarl me in dissociation or anger, etc.). In the new, I see myself in scenarios not so clear cut, and that can seem scary to want to move towards. I'm getting tired of glimpses only and want to show up for 'real' in that crisp new picture. Alas, it all takes time.

Some days this works better than others, regrettably but not wholly surprising either. It kind of shows the difficult steps we need but are reluctant to take, even for each of those small steps into the new movie, the new 'me'. And finally let the old film crumble and never be restored or looked at again. Or, in your example, when the old scene finally stays blank.

Thanks again.

[sanmagic7]

thanks, blueberry.  sounds like powerful stuff.  it's also very interesting - i'd not heard of it before. 

i'm just so glad it's working well for you.  the mind is a glorious thing, so capable of doing so much, including re-processing itself like this.  this is really a great avenue of attack and resolution. 

[Blueberry]

woodsgnome, that's really interesting for me that somebody else knows of this type of work! Do you do it on your own at home? Or just with your T?

If I ever do it at home, it takes me hours or even days to get round to it. I put it off till 2 am or something. I'm not sure why. I am meant to be doing it on my own so that when I have no therapy left, I still have a recovery tool.

[woodsgnome]

Blueberry asked Woodsgnome: "Do you do it [screen therapy] on your own at home? Or just with your T?"

In a roundabout way, the T picked it up from me. I, in turn, I had discovered it in a book of someone I highly regard. This kind of thing is characteristic of how my T operates. She has a canny instinct on catching what seems most pertinent to the client's needs. Perhaps she's tried it the other way around with others, I don't know. Her focus is true to her credo of not 'doing' therapy to someone, but working with them to find meaningful ways forward.

So yes, I also do this at home. Not formally, more stream-of-consciousness, I guess. But perhaps I should build a meditation to do just that. I find, though, that even informally, it helps to divvy up what's past that way, and recognize the old as having its place in my story, but now I can regard it as being in the old movie.

It helps that I love visualization, creating new ways to deal with the old, not in total avoidance or distraction but in seeing it differently. It's my only hope, really. Sometimes I forget its power to keep me grounded--this happened to me recently and I'm still reeling from the breakdown. Only then I remembered--hey, I'm in the new movie now--unscripted, so I have freedom to give it a fresh start, see it in a new framework of my own making.

The other part of that story is that I've been unable, for weather-related reasons, to see my T in a longer-than-usual time frame, and I miss how deftly she can suggest or ask how my two movies have been affecting me. Seems like the old one overwhelmed my senses lately. I point that out just to reiterate the theme behind the theme: this sort of visualization ain't always as easy as it seems; but sometimes, it's a lifesaver.