How does it work? Using EMDR therapy to treat trauma and PTSD

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy is a powerful psychological treatment that is used to treat PTSD and psychotic symptoms that arise from trauma. EMDR Therapy has a positive effect on how the brain processes information. Following an EMDR Therapy session, the person no longer relives the trauma. They still recall that an incident happened, but it no longer feels upsetting. In this episode, qualified EMDR practitioner, Tracy Lynch, explains what the therapy is, how the therapy works and when it is best used to treat patients.

Melissa Histon:
Hazel sisters, I have a friend who has a 16-year-old son who was mugged a couple of years ago. He’d been to a big concert in Sydney and was heading back to the train station when he was marked by a gang of boys. He was traumatized to the point that he developed PTSD and wouldn’t leave the house. My friend was really worried that he was, in fact, developing agoraphobia, which is a type of anxiety disorder where the person, or in this case her son, is afraid to leave environments that they know and consider to be safe because they’re fearful of having a panic attack or an anxiety attack.

Melissa Histon:
Now, I didn’t see my friend for a couple of months. When I did, I asked how his son was doing, and she told me he was cured that he’d actually undertaken something called EMDR therapy. It had helped him to eliminate the effects of the trauma that he had experienced, which I thought was amazing because she had shared with me vividly about how much he was struggling after being mugged. It was really traumatic for him.

Melissa Histon:
Now, I’ve never heard of this therapy before, and I want to know more because we all experience stressful and or/traumatic events at one time or another, some worse than others. Through the charity that I run, Got Your Back sister, I meet women every day who are living with PTSD as a result of the domestic violence that they’ve experienced. I’m always curious about the processes or treatments that can help women heal from the trauma that they’ve suffered. I’m very curious to know more about.

Melissa Histon:
I have a very special guest in here with me today. She’s amazing. She’s super soulful. Her name is Tracy Lynch. Hello, Trace. How are you going?

Tracy Lynch:
Good morning. I’m very well. Thanks, Mel.

Melissa Histon:
I’m so glad to have you here, my friend. If you haven’t heard of Tracy, Tracy is the founder and owner of the Thrive Wellness Hub. She’s a counselor specializing in relationship coaching, anxiety support, self-worth issues, and trauma processing. That sounds like bang on.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s pretty much it. Yeah.

Melissa Histon:
Tracy holds a bachelor of education, a post-graduate degree in counseling, a diploma of clinical hypnotherapy. Aside from training and assessment, a clinical certificate in eco state therapy, resource therapy, EMDR practitioner. Oh, my lord. That’s a lot of words.

Tracy Lynch:
A big mouth full.

Melissa Histon:
…after your name, Trace.

Tracy Lynch:
Big mouthful. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Histon:
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you are highly qualified and very experienced.

Tracy Lynch:
I am. Yeah, I’ve been in the, I guess, supporting-people-game now for almost 30 years, and most recently have become very passionate about what we would call trauma-informed therapies. The two trauma-informed therapies that I’ve more recently studied in and I’m certified in are resource therapy or parts therapy and, of course, EMDR therapy.

Melissa Histon:
Why do people come to you for counselling generally?

Tracy Lynch:
I guess, broadly speaking, people come to me because they want change. That’s either changed within the relationship, so couples, change within their relationship, or individuals who just feel really stuck. It may be that they feel stuck in recent trauma or trauma that has happened in their childhood or in their past. I think it is really helpful, at this point, if I define what trauma is.

Melissa Histon:
That would be great because I think it means something different to many different people.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. I guess it’s only really been recently that that definition has been broadened. In the past, trauma, I guess, would have been seen as what we would call big “T” trauma, which is a one-off event that has completely overwhelmed a person.

Melissa Histon:
Like if you were in a car accident or being.

Tracy Lynch:
Being-

Melissa Histon:
…sexually assaulted.

Tracy Lynch:
A rape victim, sexual assault, domestic violence, got held up by a gun. We would class classify that as big “T” trauma. But we also now know that there is this phenomenon called small “T” trauma. That is any time that our system goes into overwhelm, where we lose contact with our logical brain, and we’re coming purely from our fight or flight system. We know that lots of little “T” trauma, where we are being activated regularly, has the same impact as big “T” trauma.

Melissa Histon:
So if you’re being bullied at school or something like that, continually bullied?

Tracy Lynch:
Exactly.

Melissa Histon:
I had on Hazel’s Sister, last year, I had the guest Emma Thompson, who wrote the book Once Upon Insanity. She talks about her experience of having a complete psychotic breakdown and being institutionalized. When we talk about, and she has in her book, how did she get to that place, it was constant schoolyard bullying. It had such an impact on her throughout her life that she went into severe anxiety, depression, and then psychotic breakdown.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. One of the things that I’ve come to learn is that when we go into that fight or flight response, and our medulla is activated, if there isn’t good support and a way for us to understand and integrate and be validated around that event, then it’s like those instances get stuck. Then, we make beliefs about ourself and the world around us. For an example, with someone that has been a victim of bullying, it would be very reasonable for them to come up with a belief that says, “I’m not safe,” or, “I’m not enough. I’m not good enough,” or, “I’m left out, always,” or, “I’m a victim,” makes complete sense. If there hasn’t been good, thorough, complete processing around that incident, it almost becomes like a hook that sits over one side of the brain. Then, a whole lot of other stuff starts to get stuck on that hook, and constantly, it’s like that trauma is still going on, even if 10 years has passed.

Melissa Histon:
Yep. Yeah. I suppose I see that through I Got Your Back Sister, and many of those women, it’s probably closer to big T stuff, but they can talk about things that possibly happen in their childhood that still triggers now.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s it. It’s called sensory experience memory. That’s when our body activates, and we feel those feelings, even though what happened isn’t happening now. That’s a signal to us that there is still some unprocessed business going on about that past trauma.

Melissa Histon:
Yeah. It’s funny. I was talking to my sister about this just recently. We were having a conversation, and she said to me, “Mel, every time we talk about this particular topic,” she said, “You get fired up. It’s like, you’re triggered by something.” I’ve been reflecting on that going, “Yeah, okay. Yeah,” and doing that inner work going, “Okay. Why is it triggering? What’s happened?”

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. Yeah. I liked that question, “What’s happened?” Often in trauma-informed therapy, we will steer away from “What’s wrong with you?” or “What’s wrong with me?” and move to what has happened for me? What is going on? You might’ve seen that great diagram of the anger iceberg, where at the top is the frustration, the rage, the anger, and underneath there is rejection or fear or a whole lot more sensitive feelings. Our behavior is the protector of those sensitive feelings.

Melissa Histon:
Oh, and a little work goes into trying to sort that out.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah, it does.

Melissa Histon:
Part of the iceberg is under the water. You know what? I would say discovering mindfulness for me has been huge. We’ve all got stuff.

Tracy Lynch:
We’ve all got stuff.

Melissa Histon:
Everybody has got stuff. If you say you haven’t got stuff, you’re lying.

Tracy Lynch:
Yep. If you say you haven’t got stuff, then you’ve got stuff. You know what I mean? That’s just a cover. It’s a cover-up.

Melissa Histon:
I’m forever working through my stuff when it rears its little head up above the waterline.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. I think mindfulness actually takes us out of those thought loops. When we’re still processing stuff we’ve all got that’s sitting there, we get into these thought loops that are what we would call maladaptive. Mindfulness puts a little stop sign that brings us back to this present moment and helps us to engage with our adaptive and wise resources long enough, so we’re no longer functioning from fight or flight. We’re functioning from a different part of us, which can then help us to make better choices. Mindfulness is like the middle of the road. Instead of being unregulated or really regulated, mindfulness is the path that we can pass through to help us to gain access to more logical parts of ourself.

Melissa Histon:
Gee. You explained that well.

Tracy Lynch:
Thanks.

Melissa Histon:
Do you see any common themes of why people come to you for counseling in terms of trauma? I imagine domestic violence could be a big one.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. I’ve definitely had the privilege of working with, like you lot, some women who’ve been through domestic violence. The thing that I would probably see a lot of is around people who have not had healthy attachments in their childhood. There’s been ruptures in the relationships, those close relationships that we are designed to have as kids-

Melissa Histon:
Like with the parent, or-

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. With parents or caregivers and a breakdown of trust. When we’re living with people that are unregulated themselves, we don’t learn how to regulate. What happens is, and there’s lots of neuroscience behind this, that there’s these amazing things called mirror neurons. If I’m a little girl and I am freaking out because there’s a spider on the floor, and my caregivers get angry at me or try to shut me down, then I’m not going to learn how to deal with tricky emotions.

Melissa Histon:
Yes.

Tracy Lynch:
Yes. If there’s no one to show me how to deal with tricky emotions, and the patterns in the family are, “We don’t do emotions,” then all I can do is just continually push them into myself. Because that’s so uncomfortable, I will move into avoidance behaviors.

Melissa Histon:
Yes. Okay. That totally makes sense. Actually, I’m ticking off some people in my life. My husband and I quite often reflect about the different things that you learn as a child. I come from a family where we talk about everything, and he comes from a family where they talk about nothing. It’s really interesting to see, and what’s the right way.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right.

Melissa Histon:
It’s somewhere in the middle.
Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. That’s probably one of the reasons that you were attracted to each other.
Melissa Histon:
Okay. I never thought about it like that.

Tracy Lynch:
It’s interesting. There’s a relationship therapy called Emergo therapy. It stands for internal image. It’s Latin for internal image. That theory would say that we will not be attracted to someone who doesn’t trigger us in some way.

Melissa Histon:
Wow.

Tracy Lynch:
Because in a beautiful, healthy relationship, where there’s a willingness to journey together, we will be able to both attune and empathize with each other around those needs and then heal like never before.

Melissa Histon:
Yep. Yeah. I do know if I was married to me, I’d drive myself insane.

Tracy Lynch:
I think we all would drive ourselves insane. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Histon:
Oh, that’s funny. Tell us about EMDR. What does it actually stand for?

Tracy Lynch:
Sure.

Melissa Histon:
I’ll be asking you to say that because I can hardly get those words out.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. It’s a mouthful. Okay. It stands for Eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing.

Melissa Histon:
Eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. What does that actually mean? What is that?

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah, it’s a good question. I could probably talk all day about this. I want to give you the abridged version. EMDR was developed by a psychologist, Francine Shapiro, back in the ’70s. She was on a bushwalk, and the light was flickering through the trees. Her eyes were following the light from left to right. She’d actually had a really horrible morning. But once she got back from the walk, she realized that she could hardly remember what had gone on in the morning in the same intensity. She was really fascinated about this. She started to do lots of work around the impact of the eyes moving from left to right.

Tracy Lynch:
What we realized is it’s actually a similar concept to what our brains do when we’re in REM sleep. When we’re in REM sleep, and we’re dreaming, and then our eyes are moving up and down really quickly, we’ve realized that they’re actually moving left-right, left-right, left-right.

Tracy Lynch:
Now, in one side of the brain, that [inaudible 00:14:48] amygdala, that’s where those really raw emotions sit, often because we’ve been through fight or flight, freeze, fawn, and they’re still sitting there. The right side of our brain is the hippocampus. That’s like the storage library of our memories, but they have no charge left. They’re processed. They’re done. They’ve integrated into a whole lot of logic and wisdom.

Tracy Lynch:
What they now understand, and we’re still understanding about EMDR, because of the amazing results, is that through the bilateral stimulation… Most EMDR therapists would still get you to follow their fingers with their eyes to access left-right brain left-right brain. But we now know it’s actually not necessarily about the eyes. It’s about the activation of the left hemisphere of your brain and the right hemisphere.

Tracy Lynch:
Sometimes I’ll use what’s called TheraTappers. I put them in people’s hands, and they just buzz. Again, it’s following left-right, left-right, left-right. While we activate the trauma or we activate the memory to the point where people feel it. It’s not good just thinking about it. You’ve got to feel it to heal it. But before I activate that hard stuff, there’s a protocol that I would have activated some really good stuff, some really good resources. There’s ways that we can do that for everyone. We’ve activated the good gear, then we’re going to wake up the hard stuff through the bilateral stimulation, and the brain pulls the hard stuff out of the amygdala across into the hippocampus.

Melissa Histon:
Yes. So it’s processed and over into the memory with no charge, no emotional charge.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. Yeah. That’s right.

Melissa Histon:
That’s amazing.

Tracy Lynch:
I’s a miracle, as far as I’m concerned. Because I’ve worked with people that have… The rape went on in that street. They would drive miles around to avoid that street, can’t go down that street. After EMDR, they can drive down the street, or people that have always had a belief of… This is quite a common one. They’ve grown up in a family where they feel like I’m responsible. They feel like they’re responsible for everyone and everything. Then, they get into a relationship. That can rub people the wrong way because they’re constantly trying to step in and be responsible. After EMDR, they can now, instead of the belief of “I’m responsible,” they really can believe “I can choose where I want to be responsible,” or like your friend at… the young fellow.

Melissa Histon:
Yes. That’s a great example. With him, being mugged, and is experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder from that. Tell us about the process that you would go through.

Tracy Lynch:
Sure. Obviously, I want to get a history. I want to get an understanding of what is going on for him, what resources he has in his life. I’d explain to him how EMDR works. That’d be first session. Then, we want to make sure that there is thorough resourcing done. What I mean by that is I want to find out about this young person’s strengths. I want to find out about how, in the past, he’s helped regulate himself. We would introduce things like breathing, safe place, protector symbols, nurturing symbols. That’s activating all of those really healthy, good pathways.

Tracy Lynch:
I would never start EMDR without being fully sure that that is ready to go. Once I feel like that’s ready to go, we’ve got those good resources activated. Then, we would try and understand what are the beliefs that have come out of that event for him. Potentially, something like that, it’s going to be, “I’m going to die,” or, “I’m not safe.” It’s also really interesting to see if there are any feeder memories behind that belief.

Melissa Histon:
Okay. What’s a feed memory. What’s that? An event that’s happened in the past-

Tracy Lynch:
Yep.

Melissa Histon:
Okay.

Tracy Lynch:
The neurological pathway is I’m not safe. Potentially, that one-off event may just be a one-off event, or it could be that there are other times when he has felt I’m not safe. They’re what we call our feet and memories. They’re what we also call our targets.

Tracy Lynch:
We always start processing the strongest and the earliest memory because it will have given ground for that “I’m not safe” to take even more hold because there was already a previous belief about that. Let’s just say he remembers, “Oh, when I was little, I fell off a swing, and I was really scared.” Then, we’d get a sense of, “When you talk about that now, is there any body sensation that comes up for you?” He might say, “Yeah, I feel like I want to swallow all the time.” We would start by processing that event with the bilateral stimulation. We use what’s called SUD scale, Subjective Units of Distress. When he thinks about falling off the swing, feeling scared and the belief I’m not safe, and through a number of sets of the bilateral stimulation, the SUD scale drops down to zero out of 10. I can now think about that event, and I don’t feel anything. We know, because of MRI scans, that it changes the way the memory is stored in the brain.

Melissa Histon:
Really.

Melissa Histon:
There’s a girl I know. I was talking to her. She was sharing with me about the violence and abuse that she had both witnessed and experienced from a very young age, all throughout her childhood, teenage years, then went into an abusive relationship. She experienced emotional, physical, and sexual abuse throughout her life.

Melissa Histon:
It was really interesting when she was telling me the story. I noticed that she was quite unemotional about it. When I said to her, I’m like, “Wow…” because I had a counselor with me while I was talking to her because I didn’t want to re-traumatize her. I was really worried about that. I said, “You seem quite okay having this conversation and telling me all these details.” And she was like, “Yeah, I’ve had all this work.” That was one of the treatments.

Melissa Histon:
I get that you’re talking about processing that trauma to the point where it’s no longer emotionally charged. I’m like, “Well, I’ve seen that.” I was astounded because I know for many people who had experienced that lifelong abuse, there’s no way they could sit down and very calmly tell me about what had gone on for them.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. What happens is either that information has been processed, and it’s now in a different part of the brain. We can talk from it as a reporter rather than currently being in the fear, or some people dissociate and are able to talk about it from a different state, but the fear is still showing up in their life. The dissociation is a protector part. It’s a way that they can survive.

Melissa Histon:
Okay. That’s interesting. But in terms of the EMDR, that’s about processing that?

Tracy Lynch:
Yes. It’s definitely about processing it. But it takes a skilled practitioner to know when that person is ready, so they will not be re-traumatized.

Melissa Histon:
I was actually going to ask you about that because when I shared an Instagram story, it was your quote… I think it was last week I shared that Instagram story because I read that. I record my friend’s son and everything. Somebody sent me a message. A lady I know sent me a message. She said, “I’ve done EMDR, and I was totally traumatized. I couldn’t go on. I found the whole thing very distressing. That’s interesting. I suppose, when is EMDR the right thing for someone, and when is it not?

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah, it’s a great question. I believe that EMDR can be useful for everyone. I’ve been through a lot of EMDR. It’s amazing for those little T traumas when I notice I’m getting triggered, like when I’ve been triggered, right through to me processing growing up in a DV household. But if that practitioner hasn’t built a beautiful therapeutic relationship with the person so that person feels really safe in their company, and that resourcing part, where I said, they’ve got to activate all of the really good resources first and have them on hand… I have a safety plan with my clients. We talk about you’re going to feel feelings because we’ve got to feel it to heal it. We’ve got to feel it to unlock it out of the amygdala so it can move across into the hippocampus. Got to feel it. But if it’s so strong that we are not present, like that mindfulness stuff, it’s going to cause harm or at least do no good.

Tracy Lynch:
It’s very much about working within clients’, what we call, zone of tolerance. No therapy is good therapy if you are not staying within the zone of tolerance. I am very passionate about making sure that I never start EMDR with someone until I know they are going to be safe and that it’s going to have a positive effect.

Melissa Histon:
Yep. Okay. With the process and you were talking about the bilateral-

Tracy Lynch:
Stimulation.

Melissa Histon:
…stimulation. When I was reading about that, doing a bit of research, to me, it sounded a little bit like kinesiology or tapping. Is it similar?

Tracy Lynch:
Ah, look, I know some of my colleagues, and I’m nearly at this point where I can put my hand up through these things, will go overseas and work with disasters, like in Thailand with the tsunami. They’ll get kids in a big circle, and they’ll get them to do what’s called the butterfly hug. We tap. I know that there are some therapies that also tap EFT, emotional freedom technique.

Tracy Lynch:
Now, we know that’s very calming on our nervous system with the tapping, but it’s not a clinical tool. There’s not clinical research behind the protocol and the systems, whereas EMDR has got thousands of research papers behind it. Kinesiology is more muscle testing. That’s listening to your body. I think it’s great. I will often go and have kinesiology sessions. But again, it wouldn’t be classed as a clinical tool.

Melissa Histon:
Yep. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Yep.

Tracy Lynch:
The difference is they now have done… It’s been around for long enough that there’s been quite a lot of research done on EMDR. Whereas some of those other therapies are… They come from ancient systems, but they’re still emerging in terms of the research.

Melissa Histon:
Yeah. I love kinesiology as well. I have that done when I need to. I go and see the wonderful Bernadette O’Connor from on My Kinesiology. She’s amazing.

Tracy Lynch:
There’s some real breakthroughs there that other therapies aren’t able to access.

Melissa Histon:
How long does the process go for? If you begin the EMDR therapy process on somebody, is it one session, five sessions?

Tracy Lynch:
It’s very unlikely. It’s never one session. It really depends on the complexity of what’s going on. But, again, there’s eight phases, and the preparation and the resourcing, and all that is the start of it. People often will say, “When are we going to get to the tapper?” That’s really only a part of the whole therapy. On average, most of my clients would come for around six, sometimes four. If it’s one-off trauma with no feeder memories, we can get through it quite quickly. But if there’s feeder memories, we’re going to go, and we’re going to collapse those feeder memories. That takes longer.

Melissa Histon:
Yeah.

Melissa Histon:
When I’ve had kinesiology done, I’ve had some weird little spooky spiritual moments. Does that ever arise with EMDR, or is it more because it’s more a clinical practice?

Tracy Lynch:
It really, again, depends on who you see. I’ve got colleagues that are psychologists that use it as a very clinical tool. I guess I am someone who is very interested in rolling out therapy in a professional clinical way, but I also do it from a place of being quite an empath, quite intuitive.

Melissa Histon:
Because that’s my sense of you. It’s always been that you have that little bit of this soulful, spiritual side to you as well.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah, definitely. There’s some pretty magical stuff that goes down in those sessions. Not always, obviously, but I’m very open. I don’t know if you know, Mel, but I’m an indigenous woman.

Melissa Histon:
Oh, I didn’t know that.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. My ancestors are Wiradjuri Nation, down in Wagga Wagga and [inaudible 00:29:03]. There will be moments when I definitely have a sense that there’s more going on in the room than just the clinical stuff. For some people, they’re very open to that. We can work within that realm, and others aren’t, and we still get great results.

Melissa Histon:
Yeah. The person that’s having the EMDR therapy, do they ever go into a trance-like state?

Tracy Lynch:
No, I guess that’s probably the difference between psych-clinical hypnotherapy, where they would sometimes not always remember the whole session. They definitely are in processing mode. They are very in the moment, but people always remember the full session. We’re very interested in them being able to notice what’s going on. We want to have what we call the [inaudible 00:29:54] attention of the old memories and the here and now because that sat right-brain-left-brain. The [inaudible 00:30:07] stimulation of we’re activating the old stuff and activating what we know about the here and now, that’s how we get that bridge and the connection to release it out of the amygdala and over into the hippocampus.

Melissa Histon:
Does it change your neural pathways for, then, how you go on and think? So if an event arises, that you actually respond in that different way.

Tracy Lynch:
A hundred percent. That’s the gold right there. I’ve had a lot of clients say that… Especially over Christmas, I was at the table with those relatives. Normally, I’d be all churned up in the stomach, or my shoulders would be tight, but I just could sit there thinking something very different to what… think and feel something very different from what I’ve ever felt before.

Melissa Histon:
Okay, Trace. I have a list, as you’re talking-

Tracy Lynch:
Don’t we all, love. Don’t we all.

Melissa Histon:
I have a list of issues that I think I need to come to you about, and we’re going to. We’re going to wake through some of those issues. I love it. Because I suppose at the end of the day, as I regularly say, we just want to live the best, happiest, calm life that we can. That’s what we want.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right. I think that for me now, I realized that actually means being mostly able to live in this present moment. I’m not dipping back into old stories or worrying about what might happen. That’s one of the gifts of EMDR is I think it helps us to reorientate back into living a life that is driven by our values, not our feelings.

Melissa Histon:
I love it because our feelings are so unreliable.

Tracy Lynch:
That’s right.

Melissa Histon:
They’re so unreliable.

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. They come and go. It depends on what part is in the driver’s seat, what feelings it has, whereas our values are not. Our values stay. Our values are our anchors. They don’t change.

Melissa Histon:
Trace, I love that. I’ve never thought about that. But yeah, it’s true. I just know emotions, feelings, they’re fleeting, but they’re so unreliable. Sometimes you can’t let yourself get sucked into those feelings because it’s like the whole monkey mind. It’s just crazy chatter talk.

Tracy Lynch:
Yep. Some of us will have the resources to be able to notice “Oh, that’s just a feeling. Hello, feeling. You’re there,” and be able to notice that. But others, if there’s been feeder memories that have driven those feelings for so long, and we don’t feel like we’ve got the ability to put it aside, that would be a signal that EMDR could be useful.

Melissa Histon:
Oh, my lord. See, when you said that, I just came up with five other issues I need to have that done about because I just want to clear them, really. I don’t want to have your shoes. Don’t want to it, just want to clear them and just be happy and go and live like a monk. No, but you know what I mean, but have calmness joy, and, as you said, just live in the present.

Tracy Lynch:
Yep. Have the resources to deal with what comes up in the here and now, rather than feel like we’ve become reactive.

Melissa Histon:
Yep. Now, I am really curious about this. I like to ask people, Hey, Come On, Hey, Soul Sista, what they’ve learned about other people or themselves, their life. Now, as somebody who has been working with people, healing people, a counselor for a very long time, what have you learned about people?

Tracy Lynch:
I think probably one of my most rich learnings, that’s probably only come in the last few years, is people mostly do the best they can with what they’ve got. I really resonate with that. It’s not what’s wrong with you, or it’s not what’s wrong with them. I wonder what’s happened for them that they feel that that behavior is okay. I think that’s helped me to become potentially more gracious. Everybody has a story. Often what we see is what is going on up in the iceberg. Potentially, they haven’t had the support or the whereabouts to be able to dig deep down under the iceberg and heal what’s happened to them, so therefore, they can behave differently.

Melissa Histon:
Yeah. What have you learned about yourself?

Tracy Lynch:
Yeah. I’m a work in progress. I’ve learned to be a lot more compassionate with all the parts of me. I’ve got some great resources. I’ve got some parts that are still in process and still hurt/learning. That’s okay. I’m learning that when I fall off the horse wagon, then I can get back on. I can start afresh. I can do that with a whole lot more compassion towards myself than I’ve ever been able to do.

Melissa Histon:
Gee. Don’t we wish that for so many people in the world that they can have some compassion, more compassion, and love for themselves and forgiveness?

Tracy Lynch:
And make peace. Make peace. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Histon:
That’s a good one. Now, my friend, if people have some yearning issues or have noticed some behavior, or there’s something that they still feel traumatized by, and they think EMDR may be for them, how can they reach out to you?

Tracy Lynch:
Sure. My Instagram page is probably the best place. That’s where I’m most active. There’ll probably be a link somewhere, but it’s called repairing_relationships. I’ve got quite a waitlist to get into see me, but often people will say I’ve been dealing with this issue for years, so I’m happy to book in, even though it might be a little bit further down the track than they’d like in that moment. But I’m also developing some resources. There’s some free resources on my website, TracyLynch.com.au, which are, which start the process of the resourcing. There’s some guided meditations and things that can start to activate that good gear we’re talking about. I’m in the process of developing other resources this year. That’s the best place to find them.

Melissa Histon:
Thank you so much.

Tracy Lynch:
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

Melissa Histon:
You’re amazing. I follow your Instagram. We’re friends on Facebook. I’m forever… love seeing your posts. I’m inspired by them. I just think you’re wonderful.

Tracy Lynch:
Thanks, Mel.

Melissa Histon:
Thank you so much for coming and sharing, Soul Sista.

Tracy Lynch:
You’re welcome. You’re welcome, Soul Sista.

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