39. EMDR and the bear hunt

July 04, 2025

This week, I’m leaning into metaphors again — this time, inspired by a children’s classic: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. You’d be surprised how much wisdom is tucked inside those rhythmic pages. This episode is all about why we can’t go over or under our trauma — we have to go through it. And why that’s not just terrifying, but incredibly brave… and worth it.

So, if you’ve ever found yourself asking, “Why do I have to feel the pain to move forward?” — this one’s for you. We’re diving into the hidden costs of avoidance, how trauma sneaks into our present, and how EMDR helps us build something radical and empowering: self-trust.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

The ‘Bear Hunt’ metaphor: Why you can’t avoid trauma — and how going through it leads to real healing
Avoidance as a trauma strategy: Helpful short-term, but exhausting and limiting in the long run
The black box effect: How suppressed trauma leaks out as anxiety, phobias, OCD-like behaviours and more
The emotional payoff of EMDR: Not just healing the memory, but reclaiming trust in yourself
Self-trust as freedom: Once you know you can face the hard stuff, you unlock hope, strength, and a future that feels possible again

Key Highlights:

Why avoidance makes sense — and why it keeps us stuck
How trauma can quietly influence daily life in unexpected ways
What it really means to go “through” the memory, not just talk about it
How EMDR can transform painful memories into something manageable and safe
Why working through trauma restores trust in yourself, and how that changes everything

Resources Mentioned:

Dr. Lloyd’s Heal Your Past online EMDR program – Register at emdrdoctor.com.au/heal
Research on PTSD treatments and why EMDR is faster and more effective than traditional talk therapy for trauma

Contact and Feedback:

Thinking about trying EMDR for PTSD? Reach out to Dr. Lloyd at emdrdoctor.com.au.
Note: This podcast provides general information and is not a substitute for individual medical advice. Always consult your healthcare provider for personalised recommendations.

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Episode Transcript

Hello, welcome back to the EMDR Doctor podcast. I'm Dr. Caroline Lloyd, and welcome to episode 39. It's felt like a big week this week, not sure exactly why, but the weeks seem to be ramping up a bit with the middle of the year, not sure if that's just my expectations coming crashing down on me! as we get to the middle of the year I start to review what the year has held so far and what I have in mind for the second half, and then the time pressure really ramps up! I hope you are feeling a bit more chill than I am and coasting along enjoying life and relaxing. That's going to be my task for the weekend coming up I think!

On the back of last weeks metaphorical poddie, I was mulling over more metaphors this week and sharing some with my clients, and this Bear Hunt one came up just naturally in session.

My clients often have a lot of trauma in their lives, and they have coped with it, often brilliantly over the years, by using protective tactics like avoidance. And avoidance, even though it is a fabulous way to be able to go about daily life even despite the burden of trauma, can be a tricky tactic. Great for short term, terrible for long term. The things we avoid, the memories that we tuck away in that black box and refuse to look at, have a way of insisting on being seen, and they do this with being triggered with small, sometimes subconscious reminders just blowing the lid on the black box, or sometimes the memories seep out to contaminate our current day lives with sneaky little anxieties or phobias. You know the old saying "Don't talk about the war!" - if you are old enough to have had a grandfather who survived the world war 2, like I did, that sentence will be a stock standard in your house growing up. Those war memories were too awful to think about, were tucked away in the black box, never to be spoken of, and mention of them could blow the lid off and cause a bit of a meltdown. Then all those fears say about safety, about dying, about apocalyptic horror, would silently grow and develop and then safety behaviours come in, OCD starts to grow, those little rituals to keep safe, keep the house locked up, keep the family safe from illness, checking and washing and cleaning, and then the trauma has metamorphosed in to something like OCD. Of course that's just one way that trauma influences our lives, not everyone gets OCD symptoms, but that's one way trauma can seep out of the black box into our current lives.
So we need to take those trauma memories out of the box, in a safe and responsible way, and take the heat out of those memories, take the pain away, with an effective therapy like EMDR.

But I am completely aware that even as I say that, so simply, it is not simple, it is not easy. We put those memories away for a reason, and to take them out again feels very frightening, v scary. It takes a lot of courage. And sometimes we need some encouragement - this week I have found myself quoting from a little book that I read to my kids when they were young, maybe some 10 thousand times! The book is called We are going on a Bear Hunt, and the idea is that they go on a bear hunt and come across some obstacles, "We can't go over it, we can't go under it, we have to go through it" and sometimes I think of that when I am encouraging my clients, we can't skirt those memories, we can't bury them, we can't put them in the box forever, we have to go through them.

And once we have gone through them, especially utilising a trauma treatment like EMDR, the difficulty associated with the memory dissolves, the memory becomes less painful, and we can take it out and examine it and then put it back without fear or trepidation.

And then something else wonderful happens. When we are able to do that, to work on our difficult memories, then we start to be able to trust ourselves again. Avoidance of our memories erodes self trust, confronting them and resolving those memories builds self trust. When we start to trust ourselves again, We know that we can cope with difficult things, that our memories, our experiences, won't destroy us, we can start to develop confidence in ourselves again. We can start to rely on our integrity, our wholeness, our wellness, our coping ability, our strength. We can trust ourselves not to crumble, not to fall apart, not to end up a blithering mess on the floor. We can do hard things and still remain upright. We can start to trust our brains to wander in to the past and not disable us in the process. We can regain our past in that sense. In regaining our past, our trust in ourselves, our belief in our capabilities, we can regain our hope for our future. It is tremendously freeing.

I hope that's helpful, I hope that gives you some other ways to think about trauma, courage and trust. I will talk to you next week, until then, take good care, bye for now.

39. EMDR and the bear hunt

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