Treating Menstrual Pain with EMDR
Can releasing emotional pain lessen physical pain?
Content Warning: The following includes descriptions of physical and emotional pain. Readers are advised not to use any of the techniques in this article without the guidance of a trained mental health professional. This article is not medical advice. If you are in pain, speak with your doctor. Client details have been changed to protect anonymity and some transcript dialogue has been edited for clarity.
As soon as Charlotte sits down in the over-sized brown leather chair in my office, she says, “I’m having really bad cramps.”
A children’s librarian in her mid-30s, Charlotte initially came to see me two years ago to work on anxiety. Over the course of our work together, she also disclosed that she has a history of having migraines with her periods. But this is the first time she is reporting menstrual pain in-session.
Several months ago, I’d shared with Charlotte a case study of a previous client using EMDR (Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) to reduce endometriosis pain. Having used EMDR successfully on past memories relating to her anxiety, Charlotte has been curious about trying it on physical pain in the present.
