Kim Howard  00:05

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 talking with EMDR certified therapist and consultant, Leah Leatherbee and her former client Patty Cabot about EMDR therapy, eating disorders and sexual abuse. Let’s get started. Today we sit down with EMDR certified therapist and consultant Lea Leatherbee, who has spent the last two decades working with patients to overcome their trauma. Along with Leah we are talking with her former client Patty Cabot who credits EMDR with changing her life. Patty is also the author of “Not That Girl Anymore,” which chronicles are therapeutic journey where she tackles her darkest demons and confront a childhood marred by abuse. This is the second time our podcast is interviewed and EMDR therapy client. Thank you, Leah and Patty for being here today on our podcast. We’re so happy that you said yes.

 

Patty Cabot  00:56

Thank you for having us. I’m delighted to be here.

 

Kim Howard  00:58

Leah, can you tell us about your journey to becoming an EMDR therapist?

 

Leah Leatherbee  01:02

Sure. Well, my first job out of social work school was in a residential treatment facility in Yonkers [NY], where I was placed in the one and only house that was a lockdown. And I was the only social worker for 14 girls, ranging in age from 12 to 18 years. To qualify to get into this house for these girls, they had to have been in and out of at least 10 different foster homes. So imagine that you’re 12, and you’ve been already in 10 different homes, it means it started from when you were a baby probably Yeah. Also to qualify, they had they had to be violent they or be severe flight risks. And they had to have histories of severe physical, sexual or emotional by multiple offenders. Most of them cut or burned themselves, when they could get their hands on stuff. It’s amazing how under lockdown, they still manage to bring lighters in and other things and hide them. And they had to be restrained on a regular basis, which I was all also required to do, and which I hated. That was the piece of the job I really hated. So anyway, I was fresh out of social work school, but I wasn’t new to trauma. I spent 12 years doing human rights work before that in brutal regimes in various countries. And so, but there was something about these girls in this place that broke my heart, like more than anything ever moved me and these other places that I’ve been, so I felt very determined to help them. I was fresh out of social work school, though. And I had essentially no supervision because the person like was interested in supervising me on charts and sort of administrative stuff that gave me no therapeutic support whatsoever. So I wound up having to hire my own private person to help me but I needed even more than that. I mean, she was not, you know, she was good that she was a good supervisor, but she didn’t have this level, you know, for this level of heartbreaking stuff. She didn’t really have a lot of experience with that. So a colleague, actually in social work school had told me about EMDR. And, you know, she had said the thing about how, you know, you move your eyes back and forth, and I’m internally having a giggle and thinking, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. But I you know, I was quiet and then I and then I basically, you know, put it away and didn’t think about it ever again. Until, you know, After weathering six months of trying to help these girls and making no headway therapeutically, I did make headway in making relationships with them. And most of them I started to have a bond with, I was a bit desperate. So I actually reconsidered this silly method I heard about just because it was kind of like the only thing, the only kind of training that seems you know, trauma base and all of that, that I knew about at that moment. So, so I went to my boss there. And I begged to be able to do this because I really wanted to help these girls. And shockingly, she said, Okay, that just so happened that the Omega Center where I had been before and that I loved and you know, you can like if the training is kaka I can, I can kayak and I can do other things while I’m there. She actually paid for a seven day, part one and part two training. So I went in utterly skeptical and remained that way for the first day or two. But I don’t know, slowly, I started to see things really happening. And it was a big surprise. It turned out that EMDR was remarkable, I thought and I was pretty blown away. So you know, numerous people in this training, were wailing and stamping their feet, you know, it’s a big room, right? And, and they’re like, maybe 42 of us in there. So it’s I know there have been bigger trainings than that. But this is like in one big room. And we’re in pods of three. And so you can hear everything. There’s no, you know, it’s very hard to concentrate on your own trauma. When you’re when you’re watching this person screaming and crying, this person is stomping their feet. But I will say that, that somehow we all got through it. And by the end, when there was I’ll just tell one story. There was one really remarkable woman who in the very beginning when we were checking in, you know, and just sort of saying why we were there and why we wanted to learn EMDR this one woman had said, Well, it’s because I killed my daughter and I have been, I have not been able to. And she didn’t mean like she purposely killed her. But if she had given her, she said, you know, she had given her a pill, which was supposed to be for some kind of condition that she had. And she gave her the wrong pill. And she actually died from the pill that she took. So immediately, we’re all like, melting with empathy for this woman. So that like that, like all changed the energy of the place completely. But she looked about I thought she was about 72 years old. Anyway, she’s the one who’s screaming and crying over the corner. Well, by like, day four of the seven, she stopped screaming and crying. And by seven, so each day that we practiced doing this, this weird technique, I was sort of watching her, she just got like, a little bit better and a little bit better. And by the seventh day, she came into the last day smiling, which was, you know, wild, and she looked literally 10 years younger. And so I actually had the balls to go up and say to her, how old are you? She was like, 61, not 72. And so we all made a joke about and then so then we talked about it in the general group as we were leaving each other. And you know, it was kind of like, oh, here, the some people got the EMDR facelift, you know, right.

 

Kim Howard  06:13

All that stress and tension is gone.

 

Leah Leatherbee  06:17

Exactly. So anyway, while my own experience was less dramatic, I became a real believer, I returned to my lockdown college. And that tool made a real difference. I mean, it didn’t fix people with this level of stuff in the two years that I was there. But for some more than others, they got something from it, they got a lot from it. And it gave me a structure I could rely on. And so and then I ended up loving it so much that I went on to you know, James a concert, you know, do lots more trainings and train as a consultant and a facilitator, I facilitate trainings, and it’s really my home base.

 

Kim Howard  06:47

So, that’s a great story. And you’re not the first guest, you’re you’re in very good company, you’re not the first guest that we’ve interviewed who has said, ‘I heard about this, and I was like, naaahh, this, this can’t work. This is just magic, or fake stuff, or woowoo, or whatever it is.’ And so and then, you know, somebody they knew would keep nagging them about it, or, you know, they would continue to get things in the mail or whatever the situation was, you know, these these messages that kept coming to them. And then finally, they would go to training. And they were like, ‘oh, yeah, okay, this really works.’ And so then they, they just wholeheartedly embraced it as part of their their practice. So thank you for sharing that story. That’s a great, that’s a great origin story. Paddy, can you explain how your book not that girl anymore came about?

 

Patty Cabot  07:29

Sure. So when I first started working with Leah, I had been looking for someone to help me with an eating disorder. And that’s how I found her I had never heard of EMDR. And when Leah and I met, and she kind of mind my history and wanted to know about my story, and we landed on my childhood sexual abuse, and she said, you know, your eating disorder is a symptom of something else, it’s a symptom of the childhood sexual abuse. And until you tackle that, you’re always going to have issues that are presenting in different ways. So at the time that I met Leah, I was 38. And I never told anybody about what had happened to me, my mother knew my sister, and my immediate family knew, but I never talked about it. I didn’t share it with any of my friends, nobody knew. And, you know, it was not the sunniest of conversations that we would have when we met for our sessions. And I found the whole process just so overwhelming, because I was so close that I would literally come home from every session and write down what happened as a way to process it. And I worked with Leah for 12 years. And in that time, we explored other therapies together. And you didn’t know at the end, 12 years, I’ve had kind of remarkable history of everything that had transpired in my therapeutic journey. And when I finally achieved my goal, and my original goal might have been about my weight. My real goal was to open myself to love to be able to find love and have a relationship. And when I finally did cross that threshold and had the relationship I had always wanted, one day, I thought, You know what, I have this 12 years worth of data about my journey to get here that I thought I should write a book. And that was kind of the genesis for my book. So everything that’s in my book really did happen. Conversations, it’s the real deal.

 

Kim Howard  09:18

That’s good to know. Thank you. So you touched on this a little bit, but would you like to share anything about your trauma history if you’re comfortable?

 

Patty Cabot  09:25

Sure. So I was sexually abused primarily by my stepfather lesser by my cousin, and I really don’t know when it started. But as Leah and I started kind of targeting different memories. You know, he, my stepfather worked nights. My mother worked days. He watched me before I was in kindergarten. So I really don’t know what what point it started. But I certainly think that we mined memories from around five or so. And, again, nothing was really ever out in the open my older sister and I ultimately told my mother about what was happening and they did ultimate Laid divorced shortly before my 11th birthday, and we moved across the country. And that was kind of end of story. We, it was never mentioned again, within my family. And I think I just kind of, you know, grew up and had these different coping mechanisms for what had happened, but never dealt with the issues at all. And as I entered puberty, that is really when I started gaining and losing large amounts of weight. So I would gain 50 to 75 pounds every two years. And I did it ultimately, for 20 years. And while I had some relationships with man, I used to be either drunk or high, or I just wasn’t present. And I got to a point where I would put myself in dangerous situations, and I just locked myself away. But I really was yearning to find love.

 

Kim Howard  10:45

So thanks for sharing that. I’m sure that’s not not easy to talk about and bring up but I appreciate you sharing that with our listeners, because somebody out there probably has a very similar story to you. So thank you. Thank you for doing that.

 

Patty Cabot  11:00

Thank you. And you know, unfortunately, I will just say since I decided to write this book, which took years by the way, it wasn’t like overnight, because I’ve done it. And it’s interesting that as I’ve told people, it’s just remarkable. How many people have said to me, me, too, me too. Me too. It’s heartbreaking. It’s so common.

 

Kim Howard  11:17

Yeah, it really is. It really is. Leah, your practice offers five different types of therapies. Can you tell us how you decide to use EMDR therapy with a client?

 

Leah Leatherbee  11:28

Yeah, well, I mean, it’s usually my first go to, because, you know, obviously, before I decide, I think for most is, is first and foremost is getting to know the client a little bit. And I’m particularly assessing for effect tolerance, regulation and dissociation. But I’m thinking with my EMDR brain, and, you know, I mean, I guess EMDR is a power tool, and it can be very efficient, or maybe not very efficient, just more efficient, I think, then often then other other modalities when tolerable, but it can also set people back if they’re not ready for it. And sometimes people need a lot more work before won’t even ventures in that direction at all. So very often people come in to see me and they’ve actually already had some EMDR therapy. And it went really south, it went, you know, it just wasn’t a good experience. And they’re actually looking for some kind of repair around that. You know, other people just can’t tolerate it initially. And so I’m assessing, you know, what’s their background? What have they tried with work hasn’t worked. And you know, just getting a strength, sense of their strengths and fragilities. And then, you know, and then it’s a question of, you know, if if I mean, EMDR is my first go. So if, if it seems like they can, you know, that they’re right for it ready for it, you know, I mean, I obviously do a history and spend a little bit of time just, you know, building a relationship with them. But once it feels sort of safe enough, I asked them a lot about what their fears and concerns might be about EMDR, because people come in, especially if they’ve already had a sort of a bad EMDR experience, if it all looks good, I will try EMDR first, in many cases, it doesn’t look so good. And you know, depending on what people have, and, and a lot of people are really afraid of EMDR. So, you know, I will often turn to se or, you know, somatic experiencing, or you know, ifs, which is internal family systems, parts work or some other form of parts work. There’s lots of different forms of parts work, you know, and, and introducing regulation and mindfulness and a lot of other things, but with a view towards can I get them towards EMDR? You know, I take a little time with anybody who I’m not fully sure about, you know, so I want to know, and I, you know, I want to know what’s worked for them, what hasn’t worked for them? Why are they seeking EMDR at this time, if they are, you know, some people have had bad EMDR and want to correct it, you know, the thing I’m looking for the person who says, I want to do EMDR because it’s really fast, and I need that I need to go really fast. And I and I said well, like when you say fast? What do you mean? Oh, you know, 10 sessions? I’m like, No, Ken, do you know, like, that’s me. You know, unfortunately, I think Francine Shapiro’s first book, when she talked about, you know, rape victims and soldiers who have been traumatized in war. You know, she would often talk about, you know, five to 10 sessions, people read that book, and then they think, ah!

 

Kim Howard  14:22

It only takes that long. Yeah. And I also think that, in hindsight, now, we, we would consider that early EMDR intervention, right, you would consider that boots on the ground in any kind of situation where it’s a school shooting, or a war situation or bad weather, flooding, you know, terrible weather, you know, and so you would go in and do that. But yeah, you’re right. It’s going to take probably a little bit longer than that. Unless you’re doing intensives, which is a whole different subject and podcast.

 

Leah Leatherbee  14:49

Francine was doing longer sessions. I think then, I mean, you know, I do a 45 to 50 minute session. That is that is not enough time, actually to do 10 sessions and get that stuff dealt with.

 

Kim Howard  15:00

Right, right. Yeah.

 

Leah Leatherbee  15:02

So, you know, I’m assessing also hopes and fears about what EMDR treatment, you know, may do addressing their concerns, asking them what they’re afraid of what went wrong in the past situation if they’ve done that before, and I also have to hold in mind that, like, I sometimes think that we’re ready to go, and we do EMDR and it’s not working, or it’s stuck for a really long time. And I mean, Patty that actually happened with us, right, that I don’t remember how quickly we got into EMDR. But, but I do, I do remember that, you know, we you and I talked about recently, you know, even like that, you know, that the stuck place that kept coming up. But you know, we tried all different kinds of things with it, and just nothing, it just nothing would move it and nothing really explained it. And then we stopped doing that. And you know, we integrated other things like parts work and you know, sci fi stuff, and, and then we circled back to it when you were more ready for it, and that it really took off. Right. And but I can’t say that EMDR was the was even the main thing, necessarily. I mean, Patty was intrepid, she was she was not going to leave any stone unturned. So we both together, and also she alone found other things outside of our treatment, which I’ve supported everything I was they were all good ideas. Oh, you know, like a group on a you know, like, since she went to a group, she she did a particular type of Patty, I forget what you call that training with…

 

Patty Cabot  16:23

chiropractic care, chiropractic care.

 

Leah Leatherbee  16:25

Chiropractic care, heah. Which, which actually turned out to be phenomenal. Also mean, you got so much from that. And so anyway, we, you know, we found a lot of outside things, too. The answer is, it’s complicated.

 

Kim Howard  16:36

Yeah, we’ve talked about this on the podcast before. And I’ll say it again, for anybody who’s new and listening to but when you’re seeking therapy, you know, you it’s very akin to dating, you have to find the right fit for you and the therapist, and then also whatever modality that they’re working with, or blended modalities, but you also have to come prepared to do the work, right? I mean, that you’re literally laying it out on the table to somebody, so you can’t, you can’t hold pieces back because it won’t work if you don’t share. So.

 

Patty Cabot  17:06

No, but I will say when Leah and I first started, and because I was so closed, we really did try EMDR for, I want to say several months, and we just got a great big nowhere, because I couldn’t feel anything. So I could talk about memories, but there was no emotional connection to it for me. So it really wasn’t effective. And that was when we really just went back to talk therapy. And it was actually many years. And we were six years and before I started working with alternative kinds of therapies. And it is to Leah’s enormous credit that even though we have made so much progress, and we did, we made enormous progress over the years, I still didn’t have what I wanted. And we couldn’t figure out why. So what was always Leah, who came up with the other suggestions, just as I had never heard of EMDR, I had certainly never heard of chiropractic care, I was dead set against group therapy. And when she had suggested sex therapy, it only seemed like a more viable option than group therapy, because I was so opposed to that. But I did work with Leah the entire time, she was always part of my mix. So even as we worked with other things, she helped me then make sense of everything else that was being brought up by these other kind of supplemental things.

 

Kim Howard  18:23

Sure. That’s fantastic. I’m glad you guys found each other.

 

Patty Cabot  18:27

Yeah, the universe wanted it to happen.

 

Kim Howard  18:29

That’s right. Leah, in the simplest sense, can you explain how memories get frozen or locked in the nervous system?

 

Leah Leatherbee  18:35

Imagine you’re walking in the forest. Right? And you’re, you’re, you know, you’re you’re proceeding ahead and all of a sudden, you see something move in the distance, some like brown or silver or black thing? And you immediately think, is it a snake and, and then you stop. And all kinds of things happen in the body, which would take too long to explain. But basically, you know, your field of vision narrows significantly so that you can focus exclusively on what what may be a danger, and then you get all kinds of adrenaline and endorphins that fill your body to prepare you for some kind of response to it, you know, whether it’s fight flight or freeze. So the person immediately I think, starts to assess, you know, joy, want to, like kill the snake, you know, which is the fight response, you know, or do I want to run away, which is the flight response, or should I be very, very, very still. So, it’s not to pose a threat to whatever this thing is over there, and be noticed at all by the snake, which is freeze. So in a non threatening situation, right where the person then kind of says, like, you know, if you stand there long enough with all of that going on, but you don’t move and you’re just looking you know, you’ll you know, you may discover that it’s a stick, you know, or you may have you may be able to take one step forward if nothing’s happened, and look and see it a little more closely. And you notice it’s a stick and it still takes time for all those dreams. Olins all that adrenaline and stuff to come down maybe 15 to 20 minutes if you’re, you know, not somebody who’s been severely traumatized your whole life, but the brain and the body will be able to alleviate this reaction and return to normal functioning once the person is sure there was no danger or the danger has passed. Alright, with trauma, however, the stress hormones that are activated in the brain gets stuck in the survival mode, in the survival battle. And the remaining that, you know, sort of remaining primed for threat, and keeping the survivor in a reactive state, which ultimately affects other brain structures that act accordingly. So it becomes this kind of ripple effect. And when your brain is in constant stress, that stress can trickle down into the physical body by the nervous the vagus nerve. So, this is the slightly more complicated piece, but just that the vagus nerve is something that kind of comes out of your brainstem and it has a it has a function that’s very positive with creating social engagement, which is, which is sometimes the way you know, if the, if the threat is a perpetrator, person who wants to rape you, or something, sometimes sometimes that ventral vagal thing, if you’re not somebody who’s gonna go immediately into the parasympathetic stuff, you know, you may be able to work your way out of it, but the vagus nerve, so that has its positive ability, but then it also, you know, goes all the way down your spine, you know, your back and it affects, it affects all impacts all the major organs, or organs, regulation systems, so that, for example, your breathing, your swallowing, your heartbeat, your blood pressure, hearing, taste, circulation, digestion, gut health, like everything. But the vagus nerve can be impaired by too, too high levels of stress and anxiety, as well. And you know, this is included in this is things like alcohol, drugs, smoking, and other things that are bad for the body. And when the vagus nerve is not able to perform to the best of its ability, the mind and the brain becomes susceptible to a range of diseases. So those of us who are working with PTSD and complex PTSD encounter many people whose traumas were so overwhelming that their system simply couldn’t even process it. And the experience is completely dissociated and fragmented, but shows up syndrome only in the body. So this is, you know, the vagus nerve, you know, that those organs may start to act up. And so this is where you may find gut pain or chest tightness, or heart palpitations, or fibromyalgia, eating disorders, migraines, and all sorts of other ailments. So you know, that it travels, you know, the brain creates that you know that the body responds to it, because the vagus nerve is constantly sort of it’s it creates co-communication, right between the brain and the body. So, as therapists, we should actually, you know, we should see body or multiple body troubles as possible trailheads for us to look for is their trauma, because some people come in and they don’t present with trauma, they just present with like a ton of medical conditions. Right.

 

Kim Howard  22:56

So that’s a great explanation. Thank you. And that goes back to the book that’s very common, The Body [does] Keep the Score. So that is very true. So whatever happens to you is will impact your physicalness as well. So thanks for that explanation. I appreciate. Patty, can you tell us how your life changed after EMDR therapy?

 

Patty Cabot  23:16

Sure. And you know, just to kind of piggyback on what Leah was saying, you know, I went to see her for an eating disorder. And I was a very successful dieter, and I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t maintain my weight loss. But I certainly knew how to diet and did it extremely well. And when she said to me, oh, it’s about this your childhood sexual abuse, I honestly could have had until the end of time, and I never would have connected the two. And once she and I started working together, my weight became the easiest thing to manage, which is not to say that I wasn’t still tortured, by the way I looked or obsessed with what I was eating, or, you know, constantly finding fault with myself, you know, but I think a lot of that is being female too. But I’ve maintained 100 pound weight loss for more than 15 years. So that really did once we started really addressing the root issue, it did fix that problem, which was great. And as Leah used to say, to me, she’s like, it’s a distraction. It’s a distraction from what we really need to be focusing on because what we really needed to be focusing on was even more awful than my weight, which again, I did torture myself by. But I think one of the biggest things too, is that I always felt very alone. And while I had good friends, and you know, people that loved me, I never had real I didn’t feel connected to people. I just didn’t. And I think it’s because there was so much that I couldn’t say, like I had not only all of the secrets, but I was just so internal and so closed, that no one really knew me. So I presented one face to the world. But what I felt inside was completely different. And I think one of the great things that’s come out from EMDR for me, is that I really understand myself now. We work to get other for a long time. So it’s like we really kept fine. It’s like the layers of an onion. It’s like Jesus, do they ever and how many are there, but it really did enable me to understand myself and one of my big stumbling blocks that I will say chiropractic care really helped us move the needle on was, I didn’t like to feel emotion, the only one I was comfortable with was anger. And I fear that, you know, Leah would say to me, you need to feel the grief, you need to feel the sorrow, but I was afraid I would drown in it. I mean, I really felt like it would be overwhelming for me. And she used to say to me, you’d need to just be able to sit with it and let it wash through you and over you and you’ll be over it, it won’t still be roiling within you. And she was right. And one of the things that I have been able to do is I can identify my emotions, I can feel them, I can sit with them, I can process them and let them go. So I’m so much happier in that respect. And I think even in terms of my core friendships, which it’s all the same people all these years later, they know me now. It’s like, I am now known by people, I can share things that hurt me or make me sad, or that scare me or whatever. So I’m not so alone anymore. So I mean, that’s been amazing.

 

Kim Howard  26:08

That’s great. That’s wonderful. I’m happy to hear that. And hopefully other people out there listening will feel the same. Exactly going through some therapy. So, thank you. Leah, what do you want our listeners to know about EMDR therapy?

 

Leah Leatherbee  26:23

So I think the main thing I want to say is that EMDR is both an elegant and an efficient therapy modality really, although I doubt Francine Shapiro knew how precious she was when she developed EMDR. At the outset, it really has turned out to be a brilliant treatment. For starters, she got the pieces of traumatic experience are stored in different parts of the brain. And that people often have triggers that are not encoded in a narrative or linear form. So they may not be accessible, or at least not integrated, because some are in the right hemisphere, some in the left, and some only show up as seemingly unrelated medical condition. So how do you get people to integrate? And we’ll What do you do, Francine develops a protocol that lights up both sides of the brain, right? So she asked for a picture with rich represents, you know, which represents the worst part of the trauma that whatever you’re, you’re processing, that’s a right brain, then she asks for negative cognition and have wished for positive cognition and some other things, which is left brain cognition. And then what emotions are evoked by that picture and show negative cognition, which emotions are right brain and and then next to rate the level of disturbance of all this. So zero to 10? How disturbing is it to attend being worse than zero being the best? And, and that is cognitive. And finally, where does the client feel all the things snips that came before in their body, so left, right, left, right, left, right, like so she she created a protocol, which like just gets the person in right away to this integration, that is the thing that messes the you know, that keeps us from knowing what’s really going on, you know, then she invites the client to let whatever comes up, come up. So the associations that follow are now sort of primed to have this, you know, left, right, brain fuel. So basically, it’s very integrated. The subsequent processing allows working memory to be taxed at potentiate. Memory reconsolidation. It is just the setup that naturally brings experiences locked in one part of the brain or another to find it interact with each other over the course of processing that follows. And that makes EMDR power tool of efficiency relative to many other treatments. And I’ll just give one example of of this because I think it really kind of brings it home. And you know, this this, this toggling between left and right, and ultimately merging them. I had a client once who every time she smelled lentil soup, she had a big reaction. And it would, it could last for hours where she her whole nervous system would just be kind of lit on fire. And I mean, this was so mysterious to both of us for a while. And you know, we had to take time also to you know, get to be doing EMDR she didn’t come to me for EMDR. So we had been doing other things, but But when this came out, you know, I said let’s do EMDR on this. So we did and you know, here’s the beauty right of a Francine model, you know that what she got to that she never would have gotten to otherwise I mean, because you know what, you know, the expect one of the experiences is about the lentil soup experiences and even she just can’t even identify it in her brain. It’s just happens when it comes up. But it turns out that as as in the processing, she smelled the lentil soup, and then she recognized Oh, that’s my grandmother on the first floor making lentil soup, and the smell of it was strong. She’s on the third floor being raped by her grandfather.

 

Kim Howard  29:48

Oh my God.

 

Leah Leatherbee  29:48

That was completely out of awareness. She had no idea she had been raped, let alone my grandfather. The only vestige and you know this is again this is like the wonderful thing about our bodies and so I mean It’s awful when you’re experiencing it, but it kept giving her this clue, you know, and it was EMDR, who is getting the integration of the two hemispheres that? So, you know, I just I just think, you know, Francine was brilliant. Yeah, well, I just think it’s, it’s a fantastic modality for people who can tolerate it.

 

Kim Howard  30:18

Thank you, Leah Patty, what do you want our listeners to know about their healing journeys?

 

Patty Cabot  30:21

So I would say the first thing is, as I was, you know, Leah talks about how fast and efficient EMDR is. And I went into her, and I’m very goal oriented. And I was like, What am I going to be done? When am I going to be cured? What am I going to be fixed? And she would say to me, I don’t know, I don’t know, nobody knows, we don’t know you’re going to be fixed when you’re fixed. You know, it’s a process that takes time. And I hated that. I really did. I struggled with that. But it was a mercy that I didn’t know, because we just kept going. And it ultimately took 12 years, which is not to say that I didn’t make enormous progress in that time, because I did. So every day was better than the day before. But really, to achieve my goals was a very long process. And she would say to me, when you’re ready, you’re ready. And you know, you can’t rush certain things. And you have to just trust that if you stick with it, and are really giving yourself to the process, and you have somebody great to guide you that you’re gonna get there, and the win isn’t as important as the house. So that’s kind of the first one. And then I would say, I think that, honestly, one of my kind of stumbling blocks that made it harder for me to finish was I felt so ruined by my child sexual abuse, that I thought the only way I would ever not feel ruined as if it was undone. That was all I wanted, I wanted it to magically disappear so that I could start over. And it was impossible, right? Like I could, so I had wanted it to be undone, which wasn’t possible. And Leah would say to me, it’s not about making it disappear. Because that can’t happen. It’s about integrating and accepting, which I didn’t think was possible, I really didn’t think was possible. But you know what it was, I mean, instead of trying to disavow what had happened to me, I learned to accept, you know, and part and parcel of that was that I always felt like it was my fault, which it wasn’t. And Leah would tell me that over and over, it’s not your fault. But I think children just naturally internalize things as being their fault. And it did, they finally did get to a point where based on other things that happened in my life, I was able to draw the connection and really believe that it wasn’t my fault and move forward. So sometimes awful things need to happen to us in life. And I’m not talking about my childhood sexual abuse, but I’m talking about things that happen as an adult, just life experiences, that seem terrible on the face of it. But that doesn’t mean there’s not something to be learned from it or mind from it that will help you along the way. And that was kind of what happened with me. And then I would say, the last thing, and again, Leah did tell me this all the time, that it wasn’t my fault, and I didn’t believe it. But I did finally come to believe that it’s not my blame. It’s not my shame, and it’s not my secrets to keep anymore. And it’s the secrets that we keep that like, just kill us from the inside out. And I think that is like the greatest gift that’s come out of this for me is that I’m no longer a shame. You know, when it’s horrible that we live in a society where as prevalent as childhood sexual abuse is that the shame and the stigma still sit with the people that experience it, rather than the perpetrators, and that we don’t talk about it, and that people suffer in silence until they die. And I am so grateful that Leah and I were brought together by forces unseen and that she was my partner through this process, and she is still my friend, and there is no one on God’s green earth who knows me better than her?

 

Kim Howard  33:33

That’s great. That No, and you’re right, I think that any kind of sexual abuse, rape, it’s all of these are very still stigmatized in our, our, our society, and people won’t don’t want to talk about it. And they don’t again, you can’t heal from it. Right? If you don’t acknowledge it, I mean, that I’m the daughter of a recovered alcoholic. My dad’s been dead since 2019. But you know, you you learned that I learned that very young, you know, preteen age that if you can’t acknowledge it, you’re not going to be able to move past it. You know, so yeah, it’s it’s good that you found each other and I’m very, very happy that you were able to heal and that somebody could provide a healing for you. So that’s, that’s just beautiful. Is there anything else either one of you would like to add

 

Leah Leatherbee  34:19

I would like to add something just about Patty. I have never seen anybody work so hard, be so invested. And I know there were so many things that you know, I kept saying you needed to do and it was like, ah, you know, but, but you did them and you know you there was some part of you that always had this upbeat sort of I’m going to I think underneath it all like you know we kind of your your gods or however you you know, you would put it right that that you know that the universe is protecting me somehow it’s gonna get me there like there was some part of you that had confidence you were gonna get there. And I’ve never seen anybody worked so hard and I you know that hard work really paid off? I you know, I mean, the the, you know, the modalities are only worth so much. I mean, then it’s the relationship and it’s the work you put into it. And I, you know, she was Intrepid, she just did so many hard things. I mean, is it okay if I share just one example? Of course, it was hard for Patty to hug her friends like Hello, or goodbye, right? And do you remember that process of like, like, like, she forced herself to do it. And it was awkward, but that, you know, are sort of in the beginning, maybe not bad, but awkward right in the beginning and but just just like the number of things that she made herself do that were the things that were so hard for her to do was, I think, a huge ingredient and your healing. Patty really was such a such an honor and a pleasure to just watch her work so hard. And it really inspiration to me and to you know, I think I think your book is fabulous, and a great would be a great inspiration for a lot of people’s.

 

Patty Cabot  35:55

Thank you.

 

Leah Leatherbee  35:56

Yeah.

 

Kim Howard  35:57

Patty, is there anything else you want to add?

 

Patty Cabot  35:59

You know, I am just so thankful that we are able to sit with you on this podcast cam and I certainly appreciate this time and Leah’s you know, again, her guidance over the years because I do want people to know particularly in the field that you work in that sometimes you’re gonna end up with someone like me, who was one resistant and to do doesn’t understand what their issues are even when they walk in. So even if it seems unconnected, like Leah again, had the tools to be able to say no, it’s not about what you think it is. It’s about something else. And she really did. She was able to lead me along. And it was really hard and difficult. But again, I was committed to making it work, because I knew that the flip side was is that I was going to spend the rest of my life tortured by my weight and never have what I want it. So for anybody who feels like it’s too hard, they can’t Yes, you can minute by minute if you have to just get through now and worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow.

 

Kim Howard  36:58

That’s a great way to end the podcast. Thank you both.

 

Leah Leatherbee  37:00

Thank you.

 

Patty Cabot  37:01

Thank you.

 

Kim Howard  37:01

This has been the Let’s Talk EMDR Podcast with our guests Leah Leatherbee and Patty Cabot. Visit www.emdria.org. For more information about EMDR therapy, or to use our Find an EMDR Therapist Directory with more than 16,000 therapists available. Like what you hear? Make sure you subscribe to this free podcast wherever you listen, thanks for being here today.