Kim Howard 00:06
Welcome to the Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast brought to you by the EMDR International Association or EMDRIA. I’m your host Kim Howard. In this episode we are discussing EMDR therapy and traumatic brain injury. Today’s guest is EMDR therapist Dr. Michelle Morrissey. Michelle is based in Pueblo, Colorado and has extensive experience working with clients and stuff with TBI guys. Let’s get started. Today we are speaking with EMDR. Therapist and approved consultant Dr. Michelle Morrissey, about working with traumatic brain injuries. Michelle is an author, speaker, trainer and facilitator. She is the founder of the Morrissey Institute in Pueblo, Colorado. Thank you, Michelle, for being here today. We are so happy that you said yes.

Michelle Morrissey 00:49
Hi, Kim, thank you for having me. I’m very glad that we can get this information out there.

Kim Howard 00:55
So at least so tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming an EMDR therapist.

Michelle Morrissey 00:59
Well, like most I had a traumatic childhood. You do the standard talk therapy. And because PTSD shuts down the prefrontal cortex talk therapy is like banging your head on the wall, and you just can’t seem to get past it. And EMDR works bottom up. So I had tried a couple of years of talk therapy made whatever progress I could I go into my master’s program, and one of my professors was a Vietnam veteran. And he’s like, I’m trained in EMDR, this is the stuff you really need to look into it. So I found an EMDR therapist, I worked on those things that weren’t able to be resolved with standard talk therapy. It was so mind blowing, right? I didn’t realize I was carrying around an elephant until I did EMDR. And all that weight lifted. And it’s like, oh my gosh, I feel like I’m floating. Yeah, it was so amazing. It’s like, I’ve got to know this. I’ve got to do this. So my master’s program ended on a Thursday at 10 o’clock. And by the next Friday morning at eight, I was on a plane back to Colorado.

Kim Howard 02:05
Oh, that’s wonderful.

Michelle Morrissey 02:07
Yes, the internship to get licensed, I just practice like crazy. Went back to do part two. And then from there, little nuggets were placed a Vietnam veteran came to see me Are you certified? Oh, what certification because I was trained by the Institute. So looked into that. And then that just kind of snowballed. And it’s like then certification. And then I loved it so much. I wanted to be a consultant. And then after that, it’s like, I’ve got to teach people how to do this. Other people have to know, didn’t realize that working with brain injuries was so uncommon, or not a lot out there. So then I turned that into one of my three or four approved advanced trainings right now.

Kim Howard 02:50
Got it? Yeah, well, I think it’s also very interesting and very positive that someone who had been through the Vietnam War or any war actually knew what EMDR therapy was, I’ve interviewed some people for November, because it’s military families month and talks about EMDR therapy and veterans and active duty personnel and just trying to get the word out among people who have might have gone through some kind of war situation and whether the trauma happened in that situation, or it happened before they went and served in the military. The fact that somebody knows about it is just so amazing. And we’re just so grateful as an organization that the word is getting out there. So thank you,

Michelle Morrissey 03:28
I would say probably five of the eight calls that we get a day is people specifically asking for EMDR.

Kim Howard 03:36
Wow, that’s wonderful. So you already touched on this a little bit, maybe you can elaborate what is your favorite part of working with EMDR therapy,

Michelle Morrissey 03:42
the quick changes that can occur to symptom improvement, the confidence. So like Francine says, Start low and work your way up. And I know a lot of people teach the opposite, start big and work your way down. But I found a nugget in her book where it said, all new trainees should start at a son of five or below. And when I started to do that, I noticed the snowball effect of peeling away all these small teas. And that became the the drive for clients to continue to return. Got it? Right. Sometimes when they start on the big stuff. Even if they’re prepared and ready, it’s too big and they drop out. Right? So this has kept clients coming back more and more to work on their things. And it’s kind of like chipping away at a mountain by the time they get to the big stuff. It isn’t that big anymore. And it seems scalable and doable for them.

Kim Howard 04:36
Yeah, I think it can be overwhelming if you come to therapy and you have this one huge issue that you have to work on or that you want to work on. And it can seem like you’re right, like an elephant in the room. Right and you’re What’s that saying about? The best way to eat a frog is one bite at a time and probably seems very overwhelming. So it’s good to start with the smaller things and then build up to it. And by the time you’re there, you’re like oh, this is, you know, not as big of a deal as I thought it was. And I can get through this because I’ve done all this other prior work with all these other little T’s first. So,

Michelle Morrissey 05:08
exactly. So that the applicability in so many cases, whether it’s helping somebody who’s a public speaker, and they still get nervous, whether it’s a phobia of needles, and they’ve got to get shots for whatever reason, or give blood or if it’s all the way up to witnessing a murder, or being a family member of a suicide or war, veterans, whatever it is, you can see all those changes. And it’s, it keeps me going and I don’t get burned out because I see the change.

Kim Howard 05:39
That’s great. That’s good to know that that is important as a therapist to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and you’re not suffering burnout, because that is yes, fairly common in our profession, unfortunately. So let’s talk about the meat of why we’re here today. So talk to us about what successes you have seen using EMDR therapy for clients who have traumatic brain injury.

Michelle Morrissey 05:59
successes are phenomenal. So I treat mild and moderate TBI is severe TBI. So I’ve tried a few over the years. So the severe TBI or those who are paralyzed, can’t walk had been in comas for a month have to relearn everything. And there was so much shearing to the white matter in the brain and so much external damage that EMDR isn’t working. It’s kind of like getting AECT you’re frying the neural network. And it’s not. This is my opinion, it’s not going across the channels to work. So specifically mild to moderate TBI. And it doesn’t seem to matter the length of time from the brain injury. I had one guy who was in his mid 30s had a bicycle accident when he was 12. He had a seizure disorder. He was on medication, he was on disability and couldn’t work and having several seizures a day and doing EMDR with him. He went down to only having a couple seizures a week. Wow. He needed less medication. And he was able to work part time without stressing his brain. Yeah,

Kim Howard 07:02
that’s wonderful. Wow, what a wonderful result for not just for you as a therapist, but for him as a as a human, you know, he gets to go live a life. And so that’s, that’s beautiful.

Michelle Morrissey 07:12
I had another young lady with the most TBI I’ve ever worked with, she had 11 brain injuries, wow. Skiing accidents, car accidents, trips and falls. Because once you have a brain injury, it affects depending on where they hit their head. It can affect the proprioception part of the brain, which is kind of like our gyroscope. And it tells us where our bodies at in space and time and those whose proprioception part of the brain has been impacted. They continue to be clumsy trip and fall misjudge distances, keep smacking their head, you know, all of that. And EMDR has really helped to reset that in their brain. So that doesn’t happen anymore.

Kim Howard 07:56
That’s beautiful. What are the myths that you would like to bust about EMDR therapy and TBI

Michelle Morrissey 08:01
that it can be done. So I have some consultees and other countries, three or four other countries. And they’ve been told, you know, this, as well as here in the States, you can’t do EMDR with brain injuries. So obviously, I beg to differ starting small. So that’s one of the messes that you can’t do it, you don’t necessarily have to be trained in it. But you have to have that desire to learn at least the protocol, figuring out some things to do. So you can keep them safe, and they can get the benefits from it. Right? Obviously, if you take the training or something, then you’ve got more knowledge, more practice to go into it, you will feel more confident doing it. But it’s not like you can just wing it and go, Oh, well, this is like a phobia. I can work on phobias and try, you know,

Kim Howard 08:48
right. Yeah, well, clearly, we believe in training at EMDRIA. So we prefer that people who are practicing EMDR have been through those courses and certifications and done that kind of work so that the public understands that they’ve they’ve been educated, you know, they just haven’t read a book and said, I mean, you know, it’s my husband, I like to joke about you know, he’s, he’s very, he’s a hands on guy, right? He wants to do a lot of things himself. And I’m like, just because you can do brain surgery doesn’t mean that you should I mean, you really anybody could do brain surgery, you could get a knife you could cut into someone’s brain, but that doesn’t mean that the patient is going to survive or survive with the life that they want. Yeah, so gotta learn a little something along the way, right to make it effectful unimpacted and positive. So are there any complexities or difficulties with using EMDR therapy? And

Michelle Morrissey 09:38
yes, so the number and frequency of brain injuries will impact treatment most of the time, they can’t do eye movements because it causes them headaches, they cannot tolerate as much information coming in. So you know, the faster you do eye movements, the more information can come in or be brought up. So you’re not doing eye movements. The speed of the DHS is slower, you have shorter sets, because attention span is shorter. So every organ in the brain oscillates at a different frequency, so they don’t interfere with each other’s job. When you get head injuries, let’s just say the one part that should be oscillating at 10. Hertz is now doing at 40. So it’s like hyper focused. And the one that’s supposed to be fast is slow. So their jobs don’t get done correctly with the hits on the head, how many of them I had one tell me that on the third brain injury, it was so bad that it was as if she was hearing four different radio stations playing in her head, if you went to anybody else, they would say she was psychotic, but she wasn’t. You are hearing all your past traumas, you’re hearing what she deemed maybe people from the other realm ghosts, whatever, and it scared the bejesus out of her. Right? Right. So there’s a lot of things to be aware of, and in how to do this, okay. You can do auditory tones, you can do the tapping, virtually a lot of it is auditory with one of the sites online, if they don’t have it, because I work with the people. A lot of people in rural areas, internet or Wi Fi is spotty at best, especially when storms come through, like yesterday. So you can do it over the phone and just talk them through the speed at which to tap.

Kim Howard 11:24
How do you practice cultural humility as an EMDR therapist,

Michelle Morrissey 11:28
it’s like, obviously, cultural sensitivity, but more so you have to be aware of your own issues, your own culture, and stay on top of it. I never assume because I treat this one population, whether it’s Hispanics, or Eastern Indians, or, or somebody who’s Jehovah, that I know how everybody in that area believes everybody’s belief is different. So I actually do as much learning as I can, prior to taking on the client, whether I have to call the elders in their church community and ask for their basic tenets. So I would know how to guide them within their religious belief system, asking them once they get their generational trauma, female like oppression being held down the glass ceiling, gender stuff. And so I’m always learning expanding and asking the client so that I can stay on top of things and do things right by them.

Kim Howard 12:24
Do you happen to have a favorite free EMDR related resource that you would like to suggest for the public or other EMDR therapists,

Michelle Morrissey 12:32
bilateral stimulation.io is a free online forum to do to deliver EMDR. Virtually, he does, he came up with a paid version this year, because he added a way to put tappers to it. So people can plug tappers into their computer and get that. But you can do the free version. It works phenomenal. I absolutely love it. I don’t like doing this for the first couple of years of COVID. Right, your shoulder hurts go to the chiropractor, right? You have to find something that you can do that sustainable and won’t injure you as a therapist.

Kim Howard 13:07
What would you like people outside of the EMDR community to know about TBI?

Michelle Morrissey 13:12
Don’t settle for? Suppose it experts diagnosis as the end all and be all. So from all of the clients I’ve worked with, they have gone to neurologists, specialists, psychologists who say that they specialize in brain injuries, and probably don’t stay up on their education, because a lot of the information they’re giving them is 3040 50 years old, sit in the dark don’t do anything. Right. Yeah. Oh, well, yes. So that’s a part of it. The other part is what what concussion is not a brain injury. So they’re telling these people, if you had a concussion, basically get over it. It’s not a brain injury. You’re fine.

Kim Howard 13:52
That’s not true, though. No. I mean, my kids are young adults now. But when they were in high school, they both played sports and high school athletic departments take that very seriously. If you had any, I mean, all the way down through any kind of sports your your kids are playing. Now, if you have any kind of concussion, you know, you can’t sit in front of a computer. I mean, they have this protocol where, you know, there’s two or three days, maybe even a week, I don’t know what the numbers are anymore. But you know, you can’t, you can’t do certain things. And they have to learn that the teachers have to, you know, the kids will have to catch up on their work or whatever, because they physically can’t be in front of a computer screen for a certain number of days until, until they’re until the perception is that they’re healed. And so, yeah, wow, that’s 3040 years old. That’s, that’s crazy.

Michelle Morrissey 14:38
It is they continue to do CTS or X rays, which only check for fractures in the skull or brain bleeds. You don’t always get one with a concussion. So right now in Colorado, there used to be only one place now there’s three that do an MRI DTI. So it’s a diffusion tensor imaging. Mr. Magnetic resonance, right. And it can show the micro structures in the brain impacted by concussions, it can let you know if there’s axonal damage, it can let you know how deep into the structures it goes. So we need to be more educated on the correct types of diagnosing psychologists can do their testing for memory speed processing information. And that will give you an idea. Because a lot like you were saying with the kids, if you were in school, all of that information, they’ve all told me it hurts. They were AP students, right in college, and they can’t read too long. The information in their brain hurts, they need to take more brain breaks. And then they’re forgetting what they’ve already read or learned. So then you have the memory issues on top of it. Then after that can come depression or anxiety, which the other clients I’ve had who were older or females, they were poo pooed off by the experts in the community, saying, well, you’re menopausal. You are PMS, saying you’re just an anxious filly, this isn’t a brain injury, or you can’t have delayed onset symptoms. So some of the symptoms may emerge three months after the actual injury. And then the doctor say no, it’s not related to that. But it is, in my opinion, I think it’s like the brain needed time to heal or for the swelling to come down. And then the symptoms show up. Not being able to sleep anxious, depressed, irritable, moody, sometimes they’re suicidal, sometimes they just don’t feel safe, because they’re getting lost, they can’t remember their daily activities. They don’t feel like themselves. So then some of them have been hospitalized psychiatrically even if they weren’t suicidal. And then that was another trauma for them. Because now they’re in a inpatient with people who are schizophrenic, bipolar, having psychotic episodes. And now they’re like, oh, my gosh, I’m crazy. I lost my mind. Right?

Kim Howard 16:59
That’s really unfortunately, I feel like that is the bane of the existence of women in general, when it comes to getting health care services, that there’s a perception among a lot of providers, not all but a lot, that women are over reactive, or that they’re anal about their symptoms, or they’re making or nervous Nellies about it, you know, and you know, just because you’re you have a different chromosome from, from most doctors doesn’t necessarily mean that that what your symptoms are, are not real and not legit. So it also sounds to me, like you’re saying that you really have to become your own advocate, which, yeah, I have experienced with long term illnesses and death of both of my parents that, you know, I found out very early that the only person who’s that advocate is you or someone who’s very close to you, because you’re not going to get that advocacy when you’re in a patient’s situation. If you’re in a hospital or rehab or anything like that, it’s somebody else that either you or somebody else coming in from the outside who’s close to you, every day, being your advocate about whatever you need from from those service providers in the healthcare field. And it’s, it’s unfortunate that it has to be like that. But that’s a good message to remind people that you’re gonna have to do it or somebody’s got to deal with you.

Michelle Morrissey 18:19
And research is showing you can take one to five years to heal from a concussion or brain injury. And so it is, and so you have some people who’ve been dealing with it for a year, their spouses are like, tired of they’re saying that, Oh, my brain hurts. I need a brain break. I can’t do this, right. They’re getting tired, or exhausted for doing all the household stuff or taking care of the kids. And so then that becomes another issue is my own spouse isn’t believe in me or my own siblings aren’t or they’re tired of it. And I can understand, like somebody with a chronic illness, I can understand the frustration, but you don’t blame them and say you’re using it as an excuse to get off your butt and do stuff.

Kim Howard 19:01
Right. All right. Yeah, you don’t you don’t blame them for that. That’s correct. If you were not an EMDR therapist, what would you be? You know, I thought

Michelle Morrissey 19:08
about that for a little bit. And I thought, you know, my biggest is looking back in my life, my biggest problem because I’ve been a public school teacher, I have worked in the prison. I’ve worked for the judicial system. I don’t do in the box. Well, I am. So like, outside of the box. I wanted to be creative in the ways that I taught, I learned fast and when I learn fast, and I’ve got it down, after a year or two, I get bored. And then I’ve got to change careers, or half a place that can advance within that so I don’t get bored. So I was considering the different professions and I figured with as much time as I spent in school getting my masters and PhD I probably if not an EMDR therapist would have been a medical doctor specializing in brains or neurology or something like that. Or I would have been a professor teaching other people how To do the work that needs to be done,

Kim Howard 20:03
that’s great. It’s a great answer. There’s no wrong answer for that. But it’s also interesting to hear what people think they would would have been if it wouldn’t if they have not gravitated towards therapy. So, so I always like to ask that question. So is there anything else you’d like to add?

Michelle Morrissey 20:17
Let’s see, when you do EMDR, chunk things you may have to do EMD. Before you can return to EMDR. so desensitized the parts, people with brain injuries process, usually out of order, not all the times, but the parts that stand out to them might be the middle the end, and then the beginning or the middle beginning and then the end. And so it’s different that there is a CPT code now, where we as therapists can diagnose somebody with post concussive syndrome based on their symptoms. So, according to the CDC, there’s close to 300,000 brain injuries a year that are reported, I don’t know how many aren’t reported, but there’s quite a few people who didn’t think it was bad enough to go to the ER or seek treatment for. So even if we doubled that, let’s just say conservatively, half a million people a year with brain injuries, that’s a lot of people. There’s a lot being mindful of that, being able to diagnose it so that they feel validated, somebody’s hearing them, they have something on paper saying See, it’s not all in my head. I’m not making this up, right. Oh, there’s a ton of ways to get brain injuries. There’s obviously you would think car accidents and like you mentioned sports, there’s electrocution, there’s hypoxic events, anoxic events. So like strokes, brain surgeries to remove tumors, obviously a brain injury, electrocution, suffocation getting punched in the head. So obviously, domestic violence being assaulted where you are hit in the head, car accidents, a weather front to back, like Shaken Baby Syndrome, or side to side, if you’re T boned, then you hit your head on the winch, the side window wherever you’re sitting. And then your brain reverberates back. And that’s where you can have some shearing down into the white matter and get the axons. I’m trying to think of them all. There’s a lot that people don’t think of caustic chemicals, whether somebody’s huffing, paints or solvents, whether they work in a factory that has those strong chemicals, right, that is something to consider as well. lack of oxygen at birth, trying to think of all of them, like right off the top of my head. But anyway, there’s a lot and people don’t consider that. So if you automatically during history taking ask somebody, have you ever had a brain injury, they automatically think big brain injury, coma reset, and they don’t think of these smaller ways. So I always have to ask them. Have you ever had a concussion from a sports injury, car accident, slip and fall, and then children and the elderly are more prone to the slips and falls. And then the people in the middle teenagers to the early 40s. It’s more assaults, car accidents, and high adrenaline type sports, rock climbing, ice climbing, you know, those kind of dangerous Tyus thrilling things. So

Kim Howard 23:10
things that I will never do. Those are not on my bucket list. I’m fraidy cat, I can’t I can’t do the height thing. And I can’t I have no desire to hang on the side of a mountain. I mean, I know there are people out there who do it. And I sure think it’s amazing, you know, but I’m just too much of a fraidy cat for that. So

Michelle Morrissey 23:28
you know, would you jump out of the plane because my brother in law jumped out a plane for his 50th. And unfortunately, the main chute didn’t open and the backup chute didn’t open. So local God andum and his instructor knew how to get one open. Right? Like the only time I’m jumping out of the plane is if it’s going down

Kim Howard 23:47
if the pilot tells me to jump because we need to Yeah. Well, my dad was in the army. So he was not a paratrooper. But yeah, that’s pretty common with people who do that for a living. They’re like, yeah, we’re the only ones who actually jump out of perfectly working planes, right, the rescue people. So thank God for for for their skill set. But yeah, that’s that’s good idea for therapists to have that information on their intake forms, those those kinds of sub questions. You know, it’s like when you go to the dentist, or a new dentist or a new doctor, and they have that form, and there’s like, 100 things off there. You have to read through them all. Have you ever had any of these issues, but it’s very good for people to think a little bit outside the box about how they might have injured their head

Michelle Morrissey 24:27
and I tell people, you know, like my grandson had, he was playing T ball. Got a concussion, right. Just this year, I think it was. And I told my son because he’s like, I could just got his bell rung. It’s like, you know what, you know, I’m the expert. I know, right? Don’t say that. Right. But I said you can get heart transplants. You can have artificial limbs, you can get lungs. You can get everything transplanted brain Yep, you get One brain, you need to protect it.

Kim Howard 25:02
Very true. That’s very, very true. Well, I was a college football fan and I, one of the previous quarterbacks of the college team that I happen to like plays for the I think he’s now the quarterback of the Miami Dolphins. And he got clocked about two or three weeks ago to game and they took them off a field. And I just read an article a couple of days ago says he does not even remember being taken off the field. Yep, that’s how bad and I know football is an extremely dangerous sport. I just, it just happens to be the only sport that I understand and watch. And like I do. I do understand basketball because my daughter played it in high school, but I know how dangerous it is to the players. But I thought, wow, that’s really scary that something happened to him and an injury setting. And he doesn’t even remember the after, you know, the cardio getting carted off the field and go into the locker room. So

Michelle Morrissey 25:54
and very people want to know like, well, that’s not that big of a deal. Look at the boxers Muhammad Ali, they cut up his brain after he died. All the damage in his brain afterwards. Yeah, right. So I know we enjoy some barbaric sports. You know, I’m not a boxing fan because of that. Football. I’ve watched professionally, little kids. No, because they’re young, I want their brain pretzels. Yeah, you know, and I understand that. But really consider, we only have one brain. There’s a company that developed an airbag for your head. So professional bicyclists can wear it, and it goes around your neck and head. And as soon as it senses impact or falling, it deploys, and it wraps around your head completely with a couple of inches all around it, protecting you from the foul. $300. But if you’re invested in a sport, yeah, right. Spend the money, protect your head, right. Worth

Kim Howard 26:58
it? Yeah, yes, absolutely. Absolutely worth it. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Michelle Morrissey 27:03
Boy, there’s so much I’d love to say, but I know it’s a podcast. And it’s short. If you’ve had a brain injury, look into other types of treatment, maybe find an EMDR therapist that’s trained in brain injuries, get the help you need, so that you can start living your life again, and not just surviving it, as surviving it with medication has its place, and I get that. But if you’re taking meds to help you sleep, you’re taking meds to help your moods, you’re taking like era set to whatever that is for like dementia to help you with your memory, you don’t have dementia, it’s from the brain injuries, and all of these things, and you’re just kind of getting by day to day that’s just surviving. That’s not living,

Kim Howard 27:46
it’s not good for your body long term. And it’s not good for your pocketbook. I have no idea what you know, those medications cost, but I’m sure they’re not free. And they’re probably not $5 A month either. And so there’s a cost associated with that, you know, and if you don’t need to be on the medication. And if you can find a solution with EMDR therapy, then let’s do that, you know,

Michelle Morrissey 28:09
yeah, they actually the research showed that it’s millions of dollars to care for somebody who’s had a brain injury, and I’m sure they’re talking the severe millions, because you’ve got wheelchairs, you’ve got AIDS, you’ve got PT, OT, vision therapy, all of that, and I understand it, but even mild to moderate can cost. Let’s say you’re in your 20s or 30s. And you get one and you can’t do that profession anymore. Then you’re gonna need money to either learn something new have some time to get going, right. So we can still cost it affects children in their education, let’s say fifth grade, playing football, baseball, you get a head injury. Now they they kids have told me they feel dumbed down like high schoolers. One told me he just felt dumbed down because I used to be in AP classes and I don’t feel I’ve got the brainpower to do the work anymore. But we worked for six months or less. Right, because I think it was every other week they need a little more time to recover rather than weekly. So within six months, the kid was back in AP classes had caught up, graduated with honors went on to college.

Kim Howard 29:21
That’s a great success story. There is hope for people with TBI. Yes, that’s the bottom line. That’s wonderful.

Michelle Morrissey 29:28
You’re very welcome.

Kim Howard 29:29
This has been the let’s talk EMDR podcast with Dr. Michelle Morrissey. Visit www.emdri.org for more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our find an EMDR therapist directory. Welcome 13,000 therapists available. Our award winning blog focal point offers information on EMDR and is an open resource. Thank you for listening.