A blocking belief can be a problem in EMDR therapy when it is held in a way that makes it difficult for the client to do one of the core tasks we are asking them to do. There are plenty of beliefs that many of us have that might block EMDR therapy if they are held in a certain way. For instance, “It’s not safe to show my emotions,” may feel very true in some contexts and to some parts of us and may not feel very true in other contexts or when held by other parts. The presence of any particular cognition isn’t necessarily a block. It’s how it’s held, the rigidity with which we’re holding it, what that belief is coming to protect us from, and if its presence is crowding out the adaptive information that will ultimately be needed for a particular memory to resolve.
In the way I’m conceptualizing a block, what makes it blocking is that it impairs the client’s capacity to do one of the core tasks of EMDR therapy. This is a therapy that requires tolerable activation; requires that the client slow down, be present, and notice deeply; and requires that the client have enough of the needed adaptive information. If these tasks are a large part of what EMDR therapy is, a blocking belief probably affects one of those things. For instance, “I can’t show my emotions,” may block tolerable activation and impair noticing. Other blocking beliefs that we don’t typically think of as blocking beliefs: “It’s not safe for me to slow down,” may directly impact the client’s ability to do one or more of the things we are asking them to do. If held in a certain way, a belief of “I’m bad” can be blocking because it provides a compelling answer to the trauma and may prevent the emergence of alternatives. It’s probably coming to protect the client from even less tolerable beliefs.
Depending on how they are held, I think of some blocks as full ones. If it is simply not safe to feel their emotions across all of their parts, how are they going to do EMDR therapy? If the client doesn’t believe it is safe to slow down, be present, and notice, how are they going to do EMDR therapy regardless of our target? Some blocks may show up only when we are working in specific territories where the block crowds out the adaptive alternatives. Some blocks can be full and some can be partial, or said differently, some blocks can be rigid held and some can be negotiable.
The standard consultation guidance is to target the memories central to the formation of the block first. The problem is that those memories aren’t small. They may be the ones that most broke you in childhood and that’s not where I want to start in EMDR therapy with clients with severe trauma. Plus, how can you resolve the memories that taught you the block in EMDR before you have resolved the block itself, if the block itself if preventing you from doing one or more of the core tasks I’m asking you do to? I’ll explore some options in working with blocks inside and outside of EMDR therapy in a subsequent podcast.
Blocking beliefs are typically survival strategies. They exist for reasons and those reasons were redundantly reinforced. Things in the service of survival aren’t meant to be changed easily. Because the client is in a different developmental and environmental niche now than when the block was created and needed, we can think of the block as being a deficit in right now-adaptive information. Blocking beliefs are informational deficits about what is actually true about right here and right now.
Said differently, blocks are not blocks because your child parts believe them. They are probably blocks because your most grown-up and resourced parts also believe them. Example: “It’s not safe to show my emotions” probably isn’t a block because your kid parts believe that, it’s a block because your most grown-up parts also still endorse that belief as a survival strategy.
Blocking beliefs can also be internalized cultural stuff that is absorbed through the dense nest of cultures that surrounded and surrounds us. We got manly, womanly, pretty, fat, ugly, good, dirty, trustworthy, bad, normal, foreign, deserving, and countless other cultural constructs about the self and world through the fabric of language, media, and cultures around us. There were plenty of cultures and systems who were more than happy to shame, blame, and humiliate compliance in ways that don’t look like event trauma and sometimes don’t even leave the fingerprint of a single person. Sometimes, it’s that sneaky. Even now, cultural blocks can find their way into the therapy room and may shape the landscape of healing without anyone there even being aware.
People develop blocking beliefs experientially. They scrutinize them and eventually displace them with more adaptive beliefs when they have new and different experiential learning that creates the possibility of it. Some of that might happen in EMDR processing. A lot of it, because it is blocking, has to happen outside of it.
365 Questions About EMDR With Complex Trauma 