What do you do when what you thought would be the happiest day of your life becomes the most traumatic? This is a reality that so many mothers face during childbirth. While for some, this experience is predictable, positive, or even idyllic, it is not the case for many.
A traumatic birth experience can be earth-shattering, robbing families of their expectations, hopes, and dreams. Yet, there is often an air of dismissal around these experiences, especially if everyone ends up safe and healthy in the end.
While those around may have all but forgotten the details of the experience, it may continue to play out in mom’s mind and body painstakingly. If this resonates with you, EMDR is a therapeutic approach that can be used to heal from this traumatic experience and allow you to reclaim your life.
What is Birth Trauma?
Birth trauma is a broad term that describes a variety of birth experiences. What makes a birth traumatic is often less about what happened and more about how it felt to the birthing person. Most often, traumatic birth experiences are born out of situations that feel out of control, unpredictable, and unsupportive.
Signs of Birth Trauma
The symptoms of birth trauma may be apparent, like experiencing flashbacks or nightmares related to the birthing experience or difficulty talking about birth. It may also manifest in more subtle ways, like avoiding hearing others talk about their experiences, avoiding doctor visits, difficulty connecting with the baby, isolating themselves, anxiety over their and/or their baby’s health, and negative feelings about themselves and their ability.
While the experience of a traumatic birth experience is common (with 30% of women reporting a traumatic birth experience), it can be treated.
EMDR for Birth Trauma
Our nervous system’s response following a traumatic birth experience can be paralyzing. While there may be follow-up for the baby and potentially for the mom’s physical concerns, mental health support is often forgotten. Yet, therapy is an integral and beneficial piece of healing from a traumatic birth experience. More specifically, EMDR therapy is a lifesaving tool for healing birth trauma.
Under typical circumstances, our nervous system is designed for healing. Just like when we get a cut, our body will generally heal the wound on its own. However, when we experience trauma, it gets stuck in our with the original images, sounds, smells, physical sensations, thoughts, and feelings experienced at the time of the event. These memory fragments continue to resurface in the present moment as our nervous system attempts and fails to find a resolution. This is like a wound that has shards of glass in it. Our body isn’t able to heal from the wound because of the shards that are still present.
EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, is a trauma-informed, neurobiological therapy that utilizes bilateral stimulation to reprocess traumatic material. This essentially removes the shards, allowing space for your nervous system to heal as it is designed.
EMDR has strong evidence in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, among other mental conditions, and is so helpful in healing birth trauma.
EMDR for Birth Trauma may look like:
- Identifying traumatic experiences related to pregnancy, birth, and postpartum
- Identifying other traumatic experiences that feel connected (often by similar belief systems, like I’m not safe, I’m not good enough, I’m bad
- Practice grounding resources both in and out of session
- Reprocessing the identified memories until there is no distress experienced when thinking of the memory, there is a strong connection to a positive belief, and there isn’t any tension or tightness that arises in the body when thinking of the memory.
As a therapist for moms, I love EMDR. This is mainly because it addresses the root of the trauma and enables comprehensive healing. What this means is that instead of having to cope with constant triggers, you can naturally experience fewer triggers, decreased reactivity to triggers, and improved ability to connect with positive beliefs. Particularly for the trauma experienced during pregnancy, birth, and postpartum, I find that EMDR allows moms to integrate these experiences within their story of motherhood.
If you’re struggling with processing your traumatic birth experience, know that you are not alone, you are not at fault, and healing is available.
