James' World 2

I’m standing in my kitchen chopping garlic when my 2-year-old shouts for more cheese crackers. The timer on the oven beeps at me to flip the fish sticks when I hear a loud wail from the living room. My middle son has hit my oldest, and now they’re both clamoring for me in tears.

The thing is, this incident was par for my parenting. Everyday moments used to catapult me into a fit of rage: a cup of spilled juice, a splotch of marker on the ottoman, running a few minutes late to a social event. I would yell at my kids and shame them for little things, things that all kids do. I knew that what I was doing wasn’t great, and I knew it was probably harming my kids. But I didn’t know how to break the cycle.

I searched for answers, following social media accounts of well-known child psychologists and parenting experts, like Becky Kennedy (who gives phenomenal advice, by the way). I tried being more patient and empathetic with my kids, and it worked — to a degree. But there was still something inside of me that caused me to unleash on my kids at a moment’s notice. I’d then feel shame, apologize, and the cycle would repeat. I didn’t want to be a rage-filled, yelling, anxious mom. What was my problem?

I had seen talk therapists and cognitive behavioral therapists in the past when I went through a breakup or needed help communicating better with my husband. But after continued struggles as a mother, I knew I needed to dig deeper. Oddly enough, my mom had told me about her recent experience of seeing an EMDR therapist to work through traumatic memories from her childhood and how she felt freer, better than she ever had. In fact, she said she wished she had gone 30 years ago and told me that she and my dad would give me some money for it so I could experience the mental and emotional freedom that they had. Little did I know, I would exceed their gift and keep going to my therapist every other week for three years, spending over $4,000 out of pocket.

I signed up to see an EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) and IFS (internal family systems) therapist. EMDR is a psychotherapy technique that helps you reprocess traumatic memories to reduce the level of disturbance within your mind and body. During EMDR sessions, I would recall difficult core memories while I moved my eyes side to side. Over time, the memories that haunted me (and the memories I never knew existed that were underlying) became less potent, and my anxiety less frequent.