Back to the 2nd step: Determine emotions…
3rd step of EMDR self-coaching with the REMSTIM 3000: Body-Scan I - Determine your physical sensations
- Do you feel anything in your body? Does a body echo of your emotion exist?
- Do you feel a stirring, a physical sensation somewhere in a part of your body?
- Do you perceive a pressure, a pulling, warmth, cold or similar in yourself?
- Or do you perceive nothing, and it resembles a non-perception?
Continue to the 4th step of self-coaching: the intervention (processing)…
Helpful tips:
Your physical sensations determine self-coaching with EMDR
Your emotions are closely connected to your physical sensations. These need to be localized in this step of EMDR self-coaching. Because your body awareness often sits in one place in your body. The theory of somatic markers goes hand in hand with this. Thus, it is believed that our body, especially our amygdala, stores emotions in a specific place in our body, marking it. If a similar situation occurs, for example, one that reminds us of an old and upsetting dangerous situation, the amygdala ensures that we actively feel the old memories in our body through the emotional body marker. Especially in the case of negative and supposedly threatening events, this can save our lives as we take flight or attack to defend ourselves without thinking about it.
Everyday stresses of our modern lives equally leave somatic markers. EMDR, according to the theory, is able to erase or diminish these emotional body markings within our body to a functional level. What remains is a processed experience that has taught us something about those past events without continuing to stress us through emotional and physical stress reactions.
EMDR in self-coaching is thus a good way that, in the context of a self-help session, dissolves the link between a physical reaction and an involving event and lets us process it mentally.
So it is very helpful to make out your physical sensation when thinking about your subject in combination with your emotion in your body.
Some feel a pulling in the shoulder or a grumbling in the stomach area. Another notices a throbbing in the knee or else a scratchy throat. There may also be a pressure in the head or the absence of any physical sensations – an emptiness. No matter what you feel or don’t feel, you move forward with it and follow the EMDR self-coaching process step by step according to this guide.
In the next step (Step 4) you will then use the REMSTIM 3000 to properly execute the successful EMDR intervention, the rapid eye movements. The EMDR device stimulates that rapid back and forth of your eyes while you are fully attentive to the changes within your body. And with each change you continue in an EMDR self-application and trigger another set with the help of the EMDR glasses REMSTIM 3000.
