Helene Dubov, LCSW-C on EMDR Therapy

We welcome Helene Dubov, a Clinical Social Work/Therapist, to Echo of Connections.   She gives us the background on EMDR therapy  basics on how it started and how it works.   Helene gives us an overview of the process and the foundation needed for using EMDR.   

Trauma, what is it?  Helene gives us an easy answer to remember. Helene recommends EMDR for processing trauma in a way that integrates the mind and the body.   We found Helene full of inspirational information that brought us both hope for our healing journey.   We trust you will find her insights useful to finding reslience.  

Helene Dubov 
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/helene-dubov-north-bethesda-md/43992

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma https://a.co/d/8ifpzjq

Butterfly Hug:  https://youtu.be/xUufXf_cTec

For EMDR for First Responders: 
https://www.emdria.org/group/emdr-for-first-responders-protective-services-personnel/

Thanks for Listening. Leave Us a Message https://www.podpage.com/echo-of-connections/

Transcript

Gabe Hansen  0:02  
Hello and welcome to echo connections. I am your host, Gabe Hansen. It was my mom, DawnHansen.

Dawn Hansen  0:07  
Hello. And we are here welcoming our special guest, Helene Dubov, from Maryland, who specializes in EMDR therapy. And we're so excited to hover here.

Helene Dubov  0:19  
Welcome. Thank you for having me. So, I have been doing EMDR therapy since 1994. And I was lucky enough to affiliate with a psychiatrist who was very forward thinking, and wanted everybody who worked with her to be EMDR trained. And I didn't even know what EMDR was, it was, it was pretty early in the history of EMDR, which basically started in 1986. So it was prevalent, most prevalent in California, where it was started by a woman named Francine Shapiro, who had her own traumas and but was going for a PhD in psychology and lived with a group of other psych students, and realized, in short order, there's a story about her that short order, she learned she had breast cancer, she tried to sort out all her feelings, and she did a walk in the park and they talk about this walk in the park is being sort of clicked essential in understanding the beginnings of EMDR. So when she was walking in the park and resolving some real heavy issues, she noticed that her eyes moved left to right, right to left, and she seemed to be resolving them. And so she came back to the other students and said, think of something that bothers you. And then she would put her hands, you know, and, and wave it in front of the person's eyes to make their eyes move back and forth. And she found lo and behold, that people were spontaneously resolving their issues. And she was quite brilliant. And I was lucky enough to be trained by her. And she then wrote a grant for the VA, because there were a ton of guys who, after Vietnam, went into the redwood forest and lived like, pretty primitive guys, and only came back for their VA checks. So they, she would offer them EMDR treatment. And in a very short time, it was quite remarkable that these guys who had been traumatized by the war, and disconnected from family started to go to job training, cut their hair, you know, start becoming functional members again, wow. So the VA, sort of embraced it. And then she started taking it on the road to teach others in California, and it moved to the East Coast, Ryan, around 8586. So that basically is the walk in the park that everybody talks about. And Francine Shapiro was with us. She died a few years ago. And when she came into the room, and we were 1000, strong, we'd all stand up and clap because this therapy has changed lives and change the lives of those who actually perform this therapy. It has changed mine for sure.

Dawn Hansen  3:58  
Well, in what ways do you feel like it's changed yours?

Helene Dubov  4:02  
Because before then, I started this work. 40 something years ago, it was just talk therapy. And trauma isn't is is absorbed in the body. So talk therapy only handles one dimension of trauma. And I don't think it's enough. So how it transformed my life was that I got to see people actually get better in very short order. And I didn't have that happen with just talk therapy.

Dawn Hansen  4:40  
Oh, so you could really see a difference once you started applying. Oh, wow.

Helene Dubov  4:44  
It's gratifying to those who who do this kind of

Dawn Hansen  4:47  
therapy. Absolutely. Because you're really working with people in some of their darkest darkest times. So working their way towards the light is amazing. That's a great I could see why all of us Did you know the 1000? To to be able to help somebody else? See it visually

Gabe Hansen  5:05  
happened so fast? That must be great.

Dawn Hansen  5:07  
Yeah. So what is the process sort of look like? Do you, you know, a person comes in and sort of how does that start? And then how long does it usually

Helene Dubov  5:16  
take? It's a great question. Because at the beginning, we didn't know very much, we really didn't we, we thought that we could pull people off the street who were traumatized. Just do an AVR with some fingers, wave some fingers here, right. And, and, and do the cognitive piece because EMDR is actually there's a cognitive piece, and I'll explain that. But if you're not stable enough to do EMDR, there needs to be stabilization for so we learned that over time. So people were going to the hospital because they weren't stable enough to actually do it. It may it's it's raw, you know, you have raw feelings, and you have to be able to what I call what I think people in my field called pendulums, meaning you have to have one foot into the here and now and one foot into the past, and you have to be able to go in and out. And if you're caught if you get caught in the past, that is not reparative. Yeah, so you have to have that dual kind of attention to to be able to heal. So we learn that there has to be stabilization first. And how does that what does that look like? You need to have a visual safe place. Okay, you could go to, to pin to lake to the Okay, let's go to the beach now. Or let's go to the mountains now. I mean, the person picks their safe place, okay. And what I do is something called a genogram, which is what a lot of psych students learn in grad school, which it which is like a family tree goes back two generations, and we're looking for mental health issues two generations back relational issues, physical problems. And, and also, I find it extremely important to know if somebody has narcissistic parents. Oh, yeah. Because that can influence you and your, your relationships. So I do that first. But not everybody does that. I mean, EMDR, but I do it. So that's what, and then I have, do it a trauma history. And starting from even pre verbal, I've done EMDR with people who didn't even have the words, but had trauma done to them as a baby. So it's all through so it's been added over time is somatic, you know, paying attention to the somatic parts of the trauma. So, you know, where do you feel it in your body when you talk about this. And it's another way to access even when you don't have words,

Dawn Hansen  8:16  
the trauma. And then for those that don't know, what is EMDR stands for? What are the acronym,

Helene Dubov  8:24  
eye movement, desensitization and reprocessing.

Gabe Hansen  8:29  
While we recorded this episode of the podcast, the PC used to record it crashed, causing there to be a weird gap. That is why the beginning of the next piece has a little bit of a weird jump, please forgive us. And we hope it will not happen again.

Helene Dubov  8:43  
Then we make a list of traumas. And you know, the earliest trauma is the one we go for. Because if you can resolve the issue with the earliest trauma, some of the other traumas kind of fall away. So with every trauma, you are left with a negative belief about yourself. And so unless you deal with that, that negative belief actually informs all your decisions after that. Right. So if you feel like you're not lovable, or you're you can't trust yourself, or you're powerless, it does inform your life. So that's why it's really important. And the earliest memory is probably the best memory but some people come in with some real difficulties in the here and now. And if they're stable enough, then I go I go into them because it's more meaningful to them. So um, yes.

Dawn Hansen  9:49  
So when

Helene Dubov  9:49  
after that, then you do the processing, and we do some thing. We asked to quiet Students in the EMDR, there is, since we believe that there's a negative belief attached to every trauma, we determine what that negative belief is. And that piece is like cognitive behavioral therapy, you know? And so we we say, well, how, let's say, I'm powerless, something happened to them, and they felt powerless, then you'd say, you know, when it comes to the scene, how powerful Do you feel? And that becomes, we call voc. And we try to measure it from one set to the next to see if we're going in the right direction. The other the other parameter that we use is subjective units of disturbance, how upsetting is this original trauma scene to you. And if it's done, right, the it's 10 is the most disturbing, it will come down. And sometimes it goes, it gets worse before it gets better. Because you're, you're stirring up a lot of things. So but because we have these parameters to kind of guide us to see if we're going the right direction, or we're hitting the right, the right feelings, we can be assured that, you know, the person is heading towards healing.

Dawn Hansen  11:22  
And so when you're talking about that, 10 that level 10 Does that show as an emotional response? Or a physical or both?

Helene Dubov  11:31  
Um, Mmm, that's interesting. So I always so I asked how upsetting is the original seem to now? And so then they give me a number. And I said, we're in your body.

Dawn Hansen  11:42  
Okay, so does the EMDR process is that when you start the eye movement part, or is

Helene Dubov  11:49  
this the eye movement is when we determine what the scene is. So we set up a scene we we set up? How disturbing it is, how true is it that you are whatever the negative is, how true is it? And, and, and then we start and what is it seemed like I use something called pulsars and earphones, so the bilateral stimulation, which is what is the important piece to instead of it been just eye movement, you know, you can wave your fingers back and forth and create that eye movement. But you can also do a bilateral stem with earphones, beeping and alternative ears and pulsars also, sort of in conjunction with that. Recent I like that, but the research is mostly using the actual fingers going back and forth. But I like having the earphones in the pulse just because people can close their eyes. And sometimes that dual attention is a little bit hard for some people.

Dawn Hansen  13:01  
And is that as that process works, you know, doing the left to right, what what is that doing for your brain or your body or

Helene Dubov  13:10  
so it started there, there is a guy who I think lots of people know in the field of trauma, but also in the field of The New York Times bestseller, which is the Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Vander Kolk. So Bessel actually gave credibility to Dr. Back in the 80s. He was a Harvard trauma sleep specialist. And he he felt like there was something about the bilateral movement that was connected to from sleep. And REM is REM is when you do a lot of processing of unconscious material during the day. And so he actually begin again with your credibility. So what the so when you're traumatized your neural networks freeze, and there's communication in different parts of your brain, particularly the limbic system between the amygdala and the hippocampus. The amygdala is where all the emotions are firing up. hippocampus is learning and memory and resolution of memory. And that is exactly why kids who are traumatized have a hard time learning. It's the same neural network,

Dawn Hansen  14:29  
so it freezes. And then you can't Yeah, they're freezing of

Helene Dubov  14:33  
it. And so when it when you unfreeze that neural network with bilateral stem, that's what they thinking, you know, I don't think any of this is really proven yet, but this is what they're thinking. The brain is very mysterious. Unbelievable. How much we still don't know. But once those neural networks through bilateral stem To open up, it's, it's just cascading connections that are made spontaneously because the brain, just like other parts of your body, left to its own devices will want to heal you. Right? Right. So what I say to people is, please stay out of the way when we're doing this. This you know, the bilateral scam and where just don't ask yourself questions like, you know, oh, maybe I should have done blah, blah, don't don't just let the brain throw out words throughout scenes. And it will, it will throw out scenes that you need to see in order for you to, to come to some epiphany, okay. It's wild, and it's wonderful.

Dawn Hansen  15:40  
And so I don't want to lose our time. I wondered if you have stories of examples of yeah, yes, my post your poster child, your miracle poster child, I love it.

Helene Dubov  15:53  
Well, it's just that he had a horrific childhood where his father was a very violent drunk, and he he was a baby, actually. But I happen to know some of the things that happened through his brother. So I hate he really could not do well in school, because he saw too many things. And his mother was often violently treated by the Father. And so this baby saw this and and basically, thought he was stupid. And we were able to work through some of these traumas, some of it just somatically like, you know, where do you feel it and it got him to some places, and he resolved it. And it's wild, because he always thought he was stupid. But he started realizing that he actually was quite bright. And in a, he never learned to computers, but he wanted to buy one after about three months after treatment. And I sent him to Microcenter. And told him not to, to fall for some salesperson getting him a souped up computer, just get a basic computer. Because really, his job was such a low level job because he just couldn't manage life. And he was also an isolette. He had no friends. It was very sad. So So in about three months time, he got a computer, he taught himself and he taught himself in like, six months time, he was a whiz. And they came in one time to see me and said, You know, I would love a girlfriend. And so he learned to get unmatch okay. And her later use with a girlfriend. I think he's married now to her. And, and he he just, he just took some for that. Yeah, that's

Gabe Hansen  18:04  
a wonderful, that's

Dawn Hansen  18:05  
a great story that So is he now a computer native?

Helene Dubov  18:13  
I don't want to

Gabe Hansen  18:15  
yesterday, yeah, no, that's awesome.

Helene Dubov  18:18  
That's awesome. But if this if this podcast is for is for police, yeah,

Dawn Hansen  18:24  
and dispatchers and yeah,

Helene Dubov  18:27  
yeah, I want to say yes. You know, when people are traumatized, and very severely, they, they actually because we have a circuit breaker, emotionally, like a house has a circuit breaker. And when we get over wired, we blow fuses, we actually leave the scene emotionally, and we go to the ceiling. And we then observe ourselves being either abused or being, you know, basically, we leave. And then that part that goes to the ceiling becomes, I mean, this is all how we survived. This is not pathological, terrible, horrible. It's how we survived because it's just too much to be in your body. And this is severe, but it happens. And so that that part splits off. And it's called dissociation. And a lot of a lot of people in in, you know, the police, police, men and women see these people on the street because they're homeless. Most of those people and most people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia are also have trauma we deal with not just from having schizophrenia, but the trauma actually burns on the skin many. I worked in NIMH and I saw ice thought was like 99% of people with schizophrenia have trauma. So when when the people are on the street, and they're doing crazy things, it could be a split off part of them, what we call the emotional part. And so if you can talk them down, rather than do something really harsh, it could save a life. And these people have already endured enough.

Dawn Hansen  20:31  
And that actually, that is our, our training. And our philosophy is de escalation. And we, we do work directly with a lot of people who are mentally ill who are on the streets. So we, we definitely appreciate that. And I think it's also important to recognize that officers and people who are working with people who have survived trauma, end up with trauma themselves. And so sometimes we can find the compassion to see that somebody else is in trauma, because we've had our own traumas. And so we can be like, oh, yeah, it is really hard, you do disassociate and do check out on, you know, officers who have had to, you know, do stuff, they don't want to have to take a life, they don't want to know officers I've ever met, has ever wanted to cause anybody harm. And that, you know, just taking phone calls, like a 911 and dispatching, you know, we listen to the traumas happening, and we have to disassociate to keep doing the job, we can't process the emotions or whatever happened.

Helene Dubov  21:33  
Well, you know, what's happening? Yeah, you know, there's a woman named Christine crude toy, who in the field talks about vicarious traumatization anybody who's working with trauma can get trauma right. From it, right. So police officers, and, and so it's important to to do the work

Dawn Hansen  21:54  
yourself, right? It's important, right? And that's kind of what our whole goal is, is to try to recognize our own trauma. And then where do we go for help, which EMDR just sounded like, like you said, it's that combination of the what happened, and then a physical resolution? Because it is, I didn't really pay attention too closely until the last maybe five years about where do I feel it? Where I actually never thought about that before? Yeah, like, where's the trauma? Or the stress? Or, you know, like, why am I upset? How upset am I? I never really thought about how upset but that's sounds like a good place to go as a on a self check.

Helene Dubov  22:36  
Yeah, well, sometimes the somatic piece is really a part of you, that is speaking.

Dawn Hansen  22:43  
So when you say no, that what is great, what is somatic peace mean? I'm not familiar with what that means.

Helene Dubov  22:49  
So when you say you feel people feel in their throat, a tightness in their throat, they feel tension in their shoulders, they feel it and, you know, there's something called the vagus nerve. And it's, you know, from the head to the, to the gut. And so, that's where people snap aside or feel the feeling. Okay. So, you know, oftentimes, if what we've called the apparently normal part, which is the adult part, the executive part, is ignoring these wounded parts, the wounded parts will start expressing through the body. And so the wounded part is listened to, and, and there's a compassion for the wounded part. This is all within us. Right? Then those somatic issues go away. But if it's ignored, and it's chronic, you can get an autoimmune disease from

Dawn Hansen  23:48  
that. Yeah. So we have we have to deal with our trauma or trauma, we'll deal with us in one way. Is that accurate? Oh. Okay. That's fantastic. Wow. And so, is there things that we can do as individuals? Well, one of the questions I've had, how do you find a good EMDR therapist? And how do you know if they're good? Or you know, like, what's, what do I look for? In my shopping?

Helene Dubov  24:14  
Well, there is a International Association and a website, it's EMDRI a.or, LinkedIn, okay. And there is a little window on the top that says find a therapist in the country and probably internationally too, but basically, and by state you put in the geographical location, and you look for somebody who's certified or consultant, they've put in some time doing okay. So, yeah, and, of course, you know, if somebody's been doing it for a while, they know how to do it. And and, unfortunately, some people say they know how Do it. And they're not following protocol. And I have found that it is essential, even though I've been doing it for 28 years to follow the protocol, it's there for a reason. And

Gabe Hansen  25:13  
sounds very important the process the overall process you're explaining. So it's very important. Like

there's definite steps. Yeah. Yeah,

Helene Dubov  25:21  
not everybody does what I do, but they they do follow up the EMDR protocol, that that whole thing of the genogram is my thing. But I find that when I understand the intergenerational transmission of trauma, it makes it easier when I understand where the narcissist is, and where there might be emotional abuse. It just makes it easier to target what the traumas are.

Dawn Hansen  25:43  
It's interesting and the and the narcissistic, aspect. I understand that because I've gone through that. Yeah, we were, what is that? What I guess I what I'm looking for is what is a good clear definition of a narcissistic parent in your life? What are what does that look like? Does it is there a particular look to it? Or is there

Helene Dubov  26:03  
something called covert narcissism and overt, and then we can I know, people are different political stripes here. But you know, Trump is certainly a good example of, well, in the psych field, we call a malignant narcissist, but not everybody would agree with that. So that that is something that's particular to me because I see how narcissistic parenting has incredibly wounded people. It's when the person needs to get adoration from their children, and the children are brought up to do that, without their needs being met, to varying degrees. And I'm not talking narcissism on in the DSM, I'm just talking about it as sort of a personality type, but not in the DSM gotcha, sort of, maybe there's different there's different degrees of narcissism, clearly, right? Yeah.

Dawn Hansen  27:18  
And living in a home, we living in a home with a narcissist, I think it's fair to say there's varying degrees depending on the time frame, and depending on the situation. But that definitely rings true where where you have to the child has to be more.

Helene Dubov  27:35  
And there's also something else I want to say it is very hard to not have somebody be the focus of help of families attention, and energies, if somebody has an addiction, of any sort, or a chronic illness of any story. I mean, it just it's not like they mean to be but you know, families organized around those two are mental illness of any sort. And it's not just somebody born to who's who happens to, you know, feel like they need constant adoration. So there's a lot of it's a complex matter,

Dawn Hansen  28:14  
but it really strikes a nerve with us, for sure. We

Gabe Hansen  28:18  
both come from I'm understanding everything you're saying. Yeah.

Dawn Hansen  28:21  
Personal experience and personal experience. We're both like, oh, yeah, that really rings true.

Helene Dubov  28:28  
There's a great guy on YouTube. Okay. Lester Carr Buster, Lester Carter. And he's he has devoted his life to explaining how to deal with difficult people who have narcissism. You know what to do. If you're in a relationship, and you're feeling like you can't do it, at least just great. So I would definitely go to him. For some.

Dawn Hansen  28:57  
We like the YouTube we do a lot of learning on YouTube. That's awesome. Oh, my gosh, well, thank you so much. Is there anything else that any other references we should look into? Or I think you have answered all my questions, and I loved your miracle story. It does give a lot of hope for all of us who have those tendencies, you know, have a trauma or you know, I know for me when I've had through not too long ago, we had a pretty upsetting call and there's that wounded part who doesn't I just want to curl up in a ball and Hibernate.

Helene Dubov  29:36  
So when you when you feel that it's important to since you don't have a mommy and daddy to placate you and soothe you, you need to be the mommy to yourself. You need to be you need to actually hold her. You know there's there's something called the butterfly and they taught this your kids in Mexico When there was a landslide, and they wound up being orphaned, and there was a bunch of them, and it was just, you know, doing this and saying, I will be Oh,

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