In the physical world, Tracy was about halfway through a telehealth therapy session. Her eyes were closed and her arms were crossed over her chest, her fingers rhythmically tapping alternating shoulders: left-right-left-right. But in her mind, she was in her old basement, hiding from her ex as he screamed obscenities at her from the floor above. She kept tapping. After about a minute, the voice of her new therapist broke in from her laptop, asking, “What are you noticing?”
Fear, mostly. In the basement, she’d felt frozen with terror, convinced that this time, her ex’s anger would turn violent. The memory had lately been torturing Tracy, who’s in her early 40s and lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is a licensed professional counselor. (Therapists need therapy, too.) The memory would pop into her brain at random, sending her into debilitating panic attacks on a weekly basis. Now, with her own therapist, she was recalling the moment on purpose. Three more times, for about a minute at a time, Tracy’s therapist directed her to hold the memory in mind while tapping her shoulders. “You know that thing where you use one hand to tap on the top of your head and the other to rub your stomach?” she asked me. “It feels like talking and doing that at the same time.” Two or three sessions later, it was the strangest thing: The basement memory — once so emotionally charged — felt a little bit duller. She started having fewer panic attacks, too.
