EMDR Therapy, Prayer, and the Renewal of the Mind

I once realized something about prayer that completely changed how I understand God. I wrote about that a while back, the timeline part of this, but I never wrote about this part of it.

So for the longest time, I had thought prayer had a linear timeline. That if I missed the moment, if I didn’t pray when something was happening, then I was too late. Well, I’ve long since figured out that’s not the case with God; He is not and never has been bound by time. I’ll link that article at the end.

I’m not going to lie, I was genuinely skeptical at first about this next part because I question everything, and I didn’t want to do anything I like to call “woo woo christianity,” or something “hokey pokey.”

I did what is called EMDR therapy for childhood abuse, and again, right now, I am in it for acute PTSD due to medical trauma; part of this therapy is reprocessing traumatic moments. For the style and approach that my therapist and I use, I eventually get to a calmer point where I can sit and focus on one particular memory at a time.

There is so much more that goes on in this process than just those couple of sentences, but I just want to give an overview of what I do. So I create a safe place in my mind, now for me I have many, just depends on the day and what I want. In each safe place, there is a guaranteed theme. The light is God, the breeze is the Holy Spirit, and I always see Jesus as a real, tangible person, even though He always ends up being glowy.

I am a visual person with severe daily chronic pain, learning to calm, deep breath, communicate with my nervous system, relax my muscles, and manage anxiety, etc, are a must for me.

This is where I go in my mind to pray with Him, talk to Him, read the Bible with Him (I use ear buds and listen to the Bible on audio for that), yell at Him, dance and worship, break down crying, and sometimes just sit and be in a pissy, funky mood with Him. 

This is a part of my renewal of the mind and literal healthcare. There is an everyday dedicated time frame set aside with God that both my mind, body, and soul crave, besides my day-to-day prayer, reading Scripture, writing, worship, and jamming to music, etc.

I had already figured out that prayer is not locked into linear time, game-changer btw, but never thought of it in regards to my childhood until I started doing EMDR a few years ago for some of my more stubborn childhood memories that kept haunting me, no matter what I did.

This is where the two merged on me (EMDR/safe place + prayer is not on a timeline) to become not only the greatest therapy ever for me, but also the most beautifully and thoroughly healed me I have ever encountered, and I’ve been doing therapy bit for 20-ish years now.

I learned to pray for myself, specifically my younger self. 

As you are reading this, in this exact moment of time that is both there and not there. You are the full accumulation of your past, present, and future all rolled into one body, and that body does not distinguish between different timelines.

Trauma gets trapped in the body; those traumatic memories are in you all the time, they aren’t just “a part” of you, they are you in the present, the you you were when they happened is still in you. Memories don’t go away just because the years have flown by. 

And just like the body doesn’t distinguish different time lines, neither does God. During EMDR, I started to pray to God to heal me, that younger version of me that was hurting, broken, and stuck in that memory that just wouldn’t let go of my mind.

I used to think it was a bit wonky to talk to my younger self until I started doing it, and I did it in the presence of God. Mentally, I put myself in a safe place in the presence of God and talked to the younger me and prayed for her while we (God, me, and therapist) worked on that memory. I also prayed outside of therapy sessions, a lot. You don’t start this process and have all easy days with it; it can be hard, even making you physically ill and exhausted.

Pray and rest are a must.

When I connected the dots that prayer has no timeline and that I could pray for my younger self when connecting to those memories, everything changed. I mean EVERYTHING. There was a trickle effect that I know I could never fully explain, writing or in person.

One of the biggest changes was that certain fears (some were absolutely irrational and intense) I had started to lessen to the point of now being gone; I merely have a memory that at one time I was scared of said fear. My general demeanor calmed down, and my muscles and nervous system relaxed. I have not had one nightmare or PTSD flashback about those stubborn memories we worked on. There were certain quirks I had about certain things that vanished, my thoughts and feelings about myself changed, and the most notable change was my overall happiness and peace, because I healed and grew closer to God.

I still have my sh*t days, and I will always live with what happened to me; that won’t go away until I am snatched away to Christ. But I can tell you that no prayer is ever wasted, there is no timeline that God is bound to, you can sit there with God in a painful memory and pray for you. You can heal.

Now, since this is a heavy topic and I do talk about a specific therapy and some of my personal process with it, I have to give a disclaimer that I am not a medical professional, and this is not medical advice. This is my past and current personal experience. 

If you are struggling and need help, please reach out to your local clinic or hospital. You can also call or text 988 at any time to talk with someone if you are struggling or in crisis.

I also want to add that you can be a believer and go to therapy, take medication, and seek inpatient care. I have admitted myself four times to psychiatric wards, and I am no less a Christian for it, and God never lessened His love for me. 

© Jane Isley