The many traumas in real life and documentary film maker Michael Burns

JAN BROGAN - I might have mentioned once or twice that I had a debilitating plane phobia for many years. I would hyperventilate during takeoff, my palms would sweat, and once I even broke down crying. I tried just about everything. Drinking - didn't even touch it. Six weeks of hypnosis at Mass General Hospital was completely useless; desensitization tapes - even more useless, and psychiatrist-prescribed drugs - totally freaked me out. Cognitive behavioral therapy helped, but only a little.

Finally, I tried a new therapy called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which involved bilateral stimulation (either by eye movement or alternating tones) during treatment. As a health reporter, I'd been assigned to write about this therapy by an editor, and although I first refused, calling it "snake oil," I later learned just how extensively researched and tested this therapy really was and about its tremendous success treating returning combat veterans suffering from Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Somewhere in the literature it mentioned it had some success with phobias, so I decided to give it a try.

After being burdened this incredibly resistant phobia for something close to 25 years, I was completely cured in about six sessions. For me, it was a miracle. In subsequent stories I've written on this topic, I've talked to returning veterans, rape victims and child abuse survivors who have told me their own miraculous recovery stories.

So.... in what is definitely outside the box for Jungle Red, but in hopes of reaching the quarter million combat veterans who return with PTSD and other people suffering from other life traumas - whether its loss of a loved one, a divorce or even a minor car accident, I invited filmmaker Michael Burns to JR to talk about his documentary "EMDR, We either transform pain or we transmit it."

Michael is a native of Connecticut, is the producer/director of four films on American politics, Third Party, Preventive Warriors, Majority Rules, and Laban. I asked him how he got from politics to EMDR.

MichaelBurns: It was 2007 and I was completing my doctorate in film at the University of Birmingham in the UK when I had EMDR myself. I had come across it in the late David Servan-Schreiber's best-seller Healing without Freud or Prozac. When I had a breakthrough myself- and this shows you how much I sympathize with skeptics- I chalked it entirely up to coincidence. In other words, I was convinced that the EMDR I had had just activated some psychosomatic reaction on my part. I remember thinking that there's no way something so weird could have helped me. Simply out of curiosity I started to do some research on it and found out that in fact millions of people have had massively life-changing experiences with EMDR. So I ate up everything I could find on the subject, realizing that the catharsis I went through was not so unusual after all.

At about that time, a good friend suggested I make a documentary about EMDR since it still was hardly known at all in the mainstream. Completing my degree, which took a lot out of me, I didn't think I had the energy for a new project, but it kept popping up in the back of my mind as something that needed to be made. In the end, it was the daily bombardment with PTSD stories in the news that made me realize that I wanted to do whatever I could to help spread the word about this amazing therapy. There are so many people out there who believe that they're destined to live with the pain, body sensations, and nightmares that are grounded in things from their pasts. It's just not true. EMDR can help many of them, perhaps most of them.

JAN: How long did it take to produce the documentary and what was the biggest obstacle?

MICHAEL: I worked on it, pretty much with just my cameraman, James Kloter, for a little over three years.

The biggest obstacle was getting people to tell us their personal stories. A friend of mine put it very well the other day when she said that it's hard enough to go to therapy in the first place, relaying those details to yet another person is nearly impossible for most people. I think she's exactly right. What happens in EMDR sessions is both deeply personal and extremely hard to put into words. So, on a low budget, it became tough for us to find compelling, personal success stories to put in the movie. In the end though, we found three that did make it in, and they might just be the best parts of the film.

JAN: Your hopes for this film?

MICHAEL: I sincerely hope that people will watch this film and get in touch with that one person in their lives- maybe it's a husband, a sister, or a friend of a friend- whose ability to reach their full potential is being held back by something that happened in their past, and to tell them about EMDR. Next step is to go to the emdria.org website and to find a therapist nearby or to get in touch with emdrhap.org to talk about sessions they're offering. It's critical that people go see someone with proper training, certified by the main national EMDR professional organization, EMDRIA.

So helping those who are in critical mental condition is one of my key hopes. Having said that, EMDR is not just for the person we might know who's paralyzed by the past. I always say that it would be a miracle if any of us have sailed through life without anything traumatic happening to us. There are things in all of our histories that are holding us back, preventing us from living life the way we want to. Therefore all of us can use EMDR so that we can put disturbing memories to rest, breaking destructive habits we have and living the lives we dream of living.

JAN: In that vein, Michael has generously sent me one free copy of the film, the DVD, to give away to a lucky winner. It's one of the best explanations I've encountered on how the brain processes trauma, why it sticks in the head for years, and why EMDR can shake it free and is very moving.

Enter by posting a comment and/or signing up for our mailing list -- I need an email address to reach the winner. But please, enter only if know someone (and it can be you) who it can help. The winner will also be announced on JR by Tuesday.

For more information about EMDR or the film go to: http://emdrmovie.com

LINSANITY

JAN BROGAN: How weird is the world, when my husband, an investment banker, and I, a writer, can use the same metaphor? Not as weird as you might think.

Especially if you've been following the story of Jeremy Lin. Here's what my husband said in his investment newsletter.

"Even if you are not a sports fan, Jeremy's story is inspiring. An excellent high school basketball player in Palo Alto, he was written off ( too small, too slow etc...) as having no real future in basketball. Stanford, the revered talent incubator had no interest, even though Jeremy's high school was across the street. He ended up at Harvard with no scholarship where he played ball for the love of the game. Upon graduating (econ major) he wasn't drafted by any NBA team. He eventually signed with the Golden State Warriors where he warmed the bench and was quickly cut. He moved to the Houston Rockets and was cut before the season started. He then signed with the NY Knicks who sent him down to the D (minor) league. Not having his own apartment, he was sleeping on a friends couch. Then came his chance, a rash of injuries to Knick starters and Jeremy takes to the floor in Madison Square Garden. Six games later he is an international star, scoring more than any other player in the modern era of professional basketball in his first six games - any other player. Jeremy Lin is currently looking for an apartment in New York! So as you step up to the line and give your 50th power point presentation of the month to a group of yawning investors remember Jeremy Lin. Practice does make perfect."

And this is what I say: Jeremy Lin is the perfect model for novelists, who suffer all sorts of rejection and setbacks, but must plug on. He's the try, try, and try again story. Also a pretty good model for the characters we write, who need all sorts of obstacles if they are going to have any kind of story at all.

Writers: Have you been paying attention to Linsanity as the success-against-all-obstacles has been called? Are you inspired by it?

And come back tomorrow when I talk about how I overcame a twenty year plane phobia and will be talking a little about how I did it, and giving away a free DVD that helps explains it.

Dinner Party with Dead Authors

JAN BROGAN - As I've been mentioning as of late, I've been reading Moby Dick and developing a huge crush on Herman Melville even though he is dead. Quite dead. By crush, I do not mean that I am loving the book itself. Although I AM LOVING the book itself, the prose, the adventure, the romanticism. The complete genius. What I mean by developing a crush on Herman is strictly personal. I feel as though, if I couldn't marry him, I'd at least want to sit next to him at a dinner party and monopolize his time.

And not just to get a blurb!

I am enthralled by his observations about life, people, even the whales. I think he's got an awesome sense of humor, and that I could banter with him for hours. And of course, it's totally, maniacally presumptuous, but I sort of feel like he and I would understand each other. (I am also picturing him tall, handsome and alpha male, but I won't go into all my delusions.)

And I've felt the opposite about male authors, even while liking the books. For example, when I read the Witches of Eastwick by John Updike, I felt that no matter how great an author he was, I just really didn't like that man. I was convinced that he had only a egocentric view of women (and I'm pretty sure that was the book he wrote to address criticism by feminists.) Even though one of his short stories is my all time favorite, I am sure that if I had to listen to him talk about himself at dinner party, I'd get up and move my seat.

So Reds, what dead authors would you like to sit next to at a dinner party. And who would you like to avoid?

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I guess one of us should say Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers but I'd rather sit down with Robert Graves who wrote, among other things, I,Claudius and Claudius, the God. I was addicted to that television series and read both books and since then a biography of Augustus and one of Livia. What an incredible time. And how Graves humanized them. I'd want to know how much was fact and how much was fiction!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Jan, now I have to put Moby Dick on my to-read list!!! Can't believe I never have. But then I was always reading those English authors...

I'm going to cheat, and pick not one, but three, with the occasional fourth: C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien (and sometimes Dorothy Sayers.) The first three were part of an Oxford group of writers who referred to themselves as The Inklings. They met for regular discussions about their writing at a pub in Oxford called The Eagle and Child (affectionately known as The Bird and Baby.) Sometimes Sayers would join them.

From the time I was in my teens I wanted more than anything to be an Inkling, to have that sort of intellectual support and camaraderie. My first trip to England, I went to Oxford, and of course made my pilgrimage to The Bird and Baby. I'd still give anything just to sit and listen to them talk.

Avoid? Too many to list. Mostly having to do with American literary male angst.

RHYS BOWEN: I think I'd find most dead male authors pretentious and patronizing to a woman who dares to write books. They'd mention my "little scribblings" then ignore me,I suspect.It would be fun to sit down beside Jane Austen because I bet she could give some lovely witty and bitchy asides about the other people at the dinner table. I'd also enjoy being with some of those 20s and 30s women--Gertrude Stein. having adored Midnight in Paris, or Virginia Woolf.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Edith Wharton. Can you imagine the scathing dinner-table conversation? I'd add in Dorothy Parker and Patricia Highsmith. We could be all catty and socially superior and talk about living abroad and the failings of American society. Dorothy would drink too much and Patricia would smoke too much and Edith would point out how sadly lacking the wait service was. Nothing like it had been when she was a girl.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yes, absolutely. Edith Wharton. Number one choice. Then-Truman Capote. And Thomas Wolfe. And Shakespeare. F. Scott and Zelda, for sure. And Agatha Christie. Love this idea! (Hallie will cook, right?)

JAN: Definitely F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I think Zelda would annoy me. She was always diving into pools as I recall.

HALLIE EPHRON: Are we having dinner? Then most definitely Julia Child. And to make sure I mind my manners, P. L. Travers (Mary Poppins). And Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Little Princess and The Secret Garden and a gazillion other titles). And Lucy Maud Montgomery of Anne of Green Gables.

LUCY BURDETTE: I just want an invitation--you all have done such a good job. But I don't think we should have Hallie cook if the women are likely to complain about the help....

JAN: How about the rest of you, which dead authors would you invite to our dinner party and who would you shun?