Bill, a recovering alcoholic in his fifties, presented for treatment following a horrible motorcycle accident. The accident set off a flurry of PTSD symptoms, namely troublesome nightmares and night terrors that occurred at least five times a week.

Bill’s therapist did Face 2 and Face 3 EMDR with him. It was clear from the history-taking session that Bill was a talkative man, and that thwarting this too soon to jump right into EMDR would have harmed the therapeutic relationship. In the early sessions of preparation, Bill’s therapist suggested a few strategies he could try to help contain his troublesome emotions, and one of those was journaling. Although Bill had never really fancied himself a writer, he was willing to give it a try, and he found that he really enjoyed it. His journaling eventually moved into fiction writing, an avenue he was able to use to work out a lot of the demons connected to his accident. Here, Bill tells his story in his own words and describes how the fusion of journaling and EMDR helped him:

I’ve been involved with motorcycles for over 45 years. I have raced them, worked on them, and traveled a lot of miles on them. On one of my motorcycles I have logged over 125,000 miles in the almost 35 years of ownership. In 2003, I successfully passed a state authorized motorcycle safety course. But my troubles all started back in August of 2008, when my wife and I were on an outing that we usually make several times a year to a small resort town about 70 miles away. Needless to say, we were excited. We hadn’t been able to make this ride in a while, due to work … and we are both caregivers for our ailing parents.

The day before, I went over the motorcycle for any possible problems and everything checked out fine. I then spent the next several hours cleaning the motorcycle for our pilgrimage. We were well rested, and the sun was coming up fast and warming up nicely. Both eager, we were finally on the road. Arriving at our destination always brings back a lot of fond memories because we have been coming here for over 35 years together. We’ve made this trip well over a hundred times. As things went, we ate at our favorite restaurant and then visited a state park nearby. But we noticed a storm brewing and headed in our direction. We decided to make our way through the resort town one last time, which was on the way to the interstate, our quickest way home.

Then it happened: Halfway to the interstate, a full-sized bright red pickup truck pulled into our path. There were only two options and less than 10 seconds to make the correct decision: Hit the truck or lay the motorcycle down. I chose to lay the motorcycle down, avoiding the impact. I still feel that to this day if I would have hit the truck I would be dead. My wife would have landed on my back pushing my chest into the gas tank breaking my ribs, thus puncturing a lung.

Shortly after that fateful afternoon, I was diagnosed with PTSD. During the 15 months of at times grueling EMDR sessions, other things were tried as efforts to cope with the recurring nightmares of the red truck pulling into my path. At one point I went for more than 4 days without any sleep—I did not want to sleep to avoid the possibility of another nightmare. This resulted in me needing an emergency EMDR session, which helped.

Triggers that would cause these recurring nightmares were at first difficult to spot. Triggers were simple things like the letters from the girl’s insurance company, dealing with five different adjusters over the issues of repairing the motorcycle, the return address label on their envelopes (after all of the frustration from adjusters). I even had recurring nightmares from watching motorcycle racing on TV when a motorcycle would be laid down and the motorcycle and rider would go tumbling. Also, there was a TV show that showed a motorcycle accident similar to mine that triggered a nightmare. The strangest one was during an NFL football game when an auto manufacturer showed one of their autos and two motorcycles and one of the motorcycles running into the auto. My wife and I looked at each other and knew what was going to happen. And it did—that night I had another nightmare. But thanks to some self-tapping that my counselor taught me, I was able to cope and make it to work the following morning.

Thanks to my counselor, as a way of getting the whole accident out of my system, I was asked to write down the whole experience. I started from our leaving home and all of the events throughout the day, accident, and our journey home. (I was able to ride the motorcycle home 64 miles approximately 5 hours after the accident.) This read like a short story but evolved into a complete book (9 chapters), and at present is not finished because the medical part of our accident has not been settled. I had so much fun with the writing of this “book” that I tried to write another—this one is fiction. I have just completed my first book of fiction and will be seeking a publisher. By the way, my second book of fiction has already been started and progressing well.

I was very skeptical at first about the EMDR process, but I am a firm believer and advocate now. I have the utmost praise for my counselor and her expertise in her field and EMDR. From such a negative action came such a positive reaction. I am very grateful for her “pointing me to the pen.”

(c) Jamie Marich, 2011