Yesterday, at an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) session, my therapist George gave me an assignment.
He and I were revisiting a very upsetting incident when I was young and left alone with a lot of pain in a hospital room (which I’ve written about here). The assignment was this:
Make a list of people — real and fictional — you can imagine protecting and fighting for you. Next time we meet, we’ll bring them into that hospital room with you.
Here are some people I thought of immediately:
- Fergus (played by Stephen Rea) from the movie The Crying Game.
- Jackie Chan.
- The mother from Terms of Endearment (played by Shirley MacLaine), who screams at the nurses for not giving her dying daughter (Debra Winger) enough pain medication.
- Many of the people who read this blog.
I asked George, “How many people can I bring in to that hospital room with me? I don’t think they’ll all fit.” George told me I could bring as many people as I want.
Now, I’m really looking forward to next week’s EMDR session.
Let’s see if I have any recent photos on my iPhone of some people I might bring with me, into that hospital room of so long ago.
That’s a very good start.
What music might I bring in, from YouTube? I thought of the chorus of this song (although many of the lyrics don’t fit):
I also like Bruno Mars’s “Grenade” because there’s a short version reminding me of a fellow WordPresser:
Here‘s a more relevant song:
Who would you bring in, with you?
Finally, I’m bringing in two photos I took yesterday, before my meeting with George and after a therapy group I facilitated at work:
Now I’d like to bring in thanks to George, Bruno Mars, Buffalo Tom Peabody, the Four Seasons, all the people imagined and real in today’s post, and — of course! — you, for bringing yourself in, today.
