OEI

Recently, a situation came across my lap which triggered some trauma that although I had thought I had done my process work in this situation, it turns out that I had not. I have been exposed to a trauma therapy called Organized Experential Integration. A brief outline: when we undergo trauma, unless immediately processed, it gets stored and frozen in your brain. Post trauma when we undergo a similar experience, it reminds us of previous trauma and we react in a way that is far too "large" for the current situation. This is because the previous trauma had not been worked through and processed. Instead, we can think of it getting locked in a trauma  closet in our brain. When we encounter a similar situation, the doors of the closet get re-opened. However, these same doors are what keeps our brains from porcessing it as it normally would, say in a state of REM sleep.

OEI is a form of therapy for trauma in which the client focusses their mind on the traumatic event. The thearapist engages in a series of hand movements. With one eye covered, the client tracks the hand movements of the therapist with the remaining open eye. The therapist is able to discover, where the trauma is locked because your eye movement will not be smooth. It will stop and jump over the point of trauma. With the client still tracking the hand movements of the therapist, the therapist massages, in a manner of speaking, the point of trauma until the sweeping eye movments become smooth without stops of jumps.

An additional technique of OEI is switching which is covering one eye and guaging your emotional state and then uncovering it and covering the other eye and guaging your emotional state, By quickly covering and uncovering each eye alternately, one can equalize and negative emotions and increase the positive emotions, In a very minimal way starting the processing procedure.

So yesterday I felt the full assualt of grief that I had previously thought I dealt with. Today i was sitll feeling  some of that grief, so i engaged in the swtiching technique and managed to bring some peace in. Why do I tell you? Because for those who have undergone trauma and are afraid of reliving any of those experiences in thearpy, there is hope. You can do this in a safe way wihtout beinig retraumatized. There is hope and there is freedom. That is something that I learned from this expereince over the past day



CAUTION: PLEASE DO NOT ATTMEPT TO TRY THIS BY YOURSELF. CARE NEEDS TO BE ENGAGED IN AND SUPPORT SYSTEMS IN PLACE BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO PROCESS ANY TRAUMA. IF YOU FIND YOU ARE IN SUCH A POSITION WHERE YOU NEED TO SEEK HELP, CALL YOUR LOCAL MENTAL HELP LINE AND THEY CAN PROVIDE YOU WITH NUMBERS. ADDITIONALLY, CALL FRASER RIVER COUNSELLING AT 604-513-2113 FOR OEI THERAPY.