The Intellect and EMDR Therapy: Yes, They Both Can Get Along
“You’ve gotta feel it to heal it” – Unknown.
I’m not sure who first said it, but it’s become the mantra of many trauma therapists and influencers alike. It’s one of those simple platitudes that comes from a basic truth but as usual neglects to address the nuance and complexity necessary to understand how to apply it effectively. If your repressed trauma and emotions fill up an Olympic sized swimming pool, does this mean you should put your swimmer’s cap on and jump in headfirst off the high dive so you can feel it to heal it?
There are many ways people employ voluntary and involuntary defense mechanisms to avoid, reduce, or numb the feeling of emotions and body sensations associated with painful experiences and trauma. These include things like distractions, obsessions, compulsions, addictions, intellectualization, and dissociation. For this article, we’ll focus on intellectualization.
Intellectualization
When people hear the word intellectualization portrayed as something to be overcome, they sometimes interpret it in the context of, “Oh, you’re one of those anti-intellectuals who wants to shut down colleges and make everyone watch the Red Neck Comedy Tour instead.” No, no, no. Not that kind of intellectualization. I’m talking about intellectualization in the context of psychology as a defense mechanism. It can and absolutely does interfere with the ability to process emotions and somatic distress in therapy. But the thing is, that’s exactly what it’s for and most of the time people don’t need to be drowning in the full brunt of their pain.
Habitually retreating into analysis and the thinking mind is understandable when the emotional and embodied self is storing a nightmare no one would want to feel. It’s especially true for people who are highly verbal, clever, and rewarded for their intellect. The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung once said, “Intellectualism is a common cover-up for fear of direct experience.” People with traumatic histories have good reasons to fear direct experience of themselves.
Intellectualization is a relatively easy defense to spot in therapy. It was spotted in the early days of Sigmund Freud, and was further clarified by his daughter Anna Freud, along with Carl Jung, William Reich, and George Vaillant. The novice therapist will prematurely rejoice in their identification of this low hanging fruit thinking they’ve got something figured out. The seasoned therapist will begin gauging the degree of the defense and imagine it in proportion to the magnitude of what it’s defending against, letting them know their work is cut out for them.
When I engage with a person who fills any empty space with talking, thinks in highly abstract terms on a macro and systems level of analysis, and observes the present moment from a metacognitive perspective as if being the “third person” in the room, I take a deep breath, imagine the ice berg underneath the surface of this intellectualization, and how hard it must be to avoid that ice berg all day. Often, a person with this presentation tries to act as a psychoanalyst for themselves and they’ve often psychoanalyzed themselves backwards and forwards, with one crucial blind spot preventing them from healing themselves: they stay in their head with a death grip on control.
Defenses and intellectualizing ego states should be met with respect and admiration for how hard they’ve worked to protect the person all these years. They are not the problem, but a solution that doesn’t fully solve the problem. It requires carefully gained trust for the intellectual ego state to step back and allow space for something other than thought content to be present.
How is Intellectualization Handled in Therapy?
It depends on who you ask. There’s a wide range of approaches, but I’ll speak to my preferred territory which involves the use of Ego State Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy. To understand what I’m talking about using these esoteric terms and acronyms, I’ll give a brief overview of two models that are often used to conceptualize something crucial in trauma therapy: dissociation of the personality.
The Theory of Structural Dissociation
Based on the ideas of psychologist Pierre Janet, the theory of structural dissociation rests on the idea that childhood trauma disrupts the development and integration of the personality. “Parts” emerge to handle different functions rather than having a unified psyche with continuity between states. For example, the “apparently normal part of the personality” serves to handle everyday functions and get by in life, while the “emotional part” of the personality is dedicated to fight/flight/freeze/fawn functions of the nervous system. From this perspective, the mere thought of a therapeutic interaction leading to exposure to traumatic memories or emotions is enough to trigger a “flight” part. This part then springs into action to intellectualize and move at a cognitive pace that keeps the conversation and the mind on the run, away from the feared memory content.
Because intellectualization can be quite adaptive if the intellect is used for problem solving, work and career, or impressing others with knowledge, it can also become a key trait of the apparently normal part of the personality. The pace at which a person is speaking, and their body language is often a clue as to what degree “flight” has entered the picture.
The Internal Family Systems (IFS) Model
Along the same lines, with a different structure, therapist and author, Richard Schwartz, PhD, developed his own model of “parts” within the personality. He proposed the roles of Manager, Firefighter, and Exile, to describe the internal system of defenses at work within us.
The Manager is proactive, always strategizing on how to navigate situations and interactions in a way that prevents traumatic material from being triggered, a proactive avoider. Imagine the part of yourself that gets obsessive over a presentation, trying to manage every detail to avoid embarrassment. This can go to extremes.
The Firefighter is reactive, springing into action to put out the fire if the manager slips up and traumatic material does get triggered. Imagine the part of yourself that would come up if you bombed the presentation, you might immediately go to the bar for a drink, if you drink, or call all your friends for reassurance to put out the fire. This can also go to extremes.
The Exile holds the burden of traumatic memory content, which is pushed away or dissociated so the rest of the system doesn’t encounter what they are holding. After the presentation, if you made a promise to yourself to never speak of this event again, you would be consciously creating an exile, a part of you left standing there on the stage in horror. For people prone to dissociation, this is not always conscious, it just happens.
From this perspective, the intellectualizing Manager is a highly proactive part that keeps things cognitive, abstract, away from first-person embodiment, staying at a safe distance. This has a secondary benefit of potentially impressing the listener with insight and knowledge hoping they don’t press any further.
Strategies in the Stabilization and Preparation Phase of EMDR therapy
Therapeutic strategy emerges from the theory, attitude, and beliefs of the therapist. My belief is that people employ defenses for good reasons. They are trying to manage their overwhelm because they lack the confidence and skills to tolerate their pain, who would be judgmental or mad about that? I do it myself, I can totally empathize. From this position, I approach intellectualization with curiosity, genuine interest, and work my way up to providing education once the defense has been acknowledged and we are both present in the room with it. While it’s hard to concretely operationalize every possible way a conversation can go, there are some basic objectives I keep in mind and I share these with my clients:
Identify intellectualization and name it
Explore its role, purpose, and how long it’s been serving this purpose
Identify its fears of what would happen if it allowed for emotions or memories to come up
Address these fears and negotiate agreements for small tolerable steps that feel safe enough to take
Begin taking these steps and reviewing the feared outcome vs how things actually went to build confidence and trust
There are many tools and strategies for facilitating “parts work” leading up to readiness for EMDR therapy that are too much of a deep dive to include in this article. It can take time to be ready. So let’s assume we’ve achieved readiness and move on to how intellectualizing is handled during the reprocessing of traumatic memories with EMDR.
During EMDR memory reprocessing, the ideal state of mind is one of fully present mindful awareness, simply noticing what is occurring without additional analysis or judgment on top of it (direct experience). The client is noticing multiple channels of information: cognitive, emotional, sensory, and somatic (body sensations). Maintaining a mindful state of noticing can be difficult, and reprocessing can quickly drift into being solely cognitive, with excessive analysis and thinking about the thoughts. When this occurs, there are several interventions that can be used:
Changing the channel: simply asking the client, “what else are you noticing?” Or actively suggesting they notice their emotional state and where they feel it in the body, then resuming reprocessing.
Engaging in parts work: engaging with the intellectualizing part based on previous conversations and working with the client to make a new agreement to allow for exposure. Exposure may need to be limited so it’s tolerable again.
Exploring a blocking belief: a “blocking belief” could be something like, “If I heal from this memory, it will mean I’m saying it’s ok that it happened,” or, “there’s no way I can be a good person because such and such happened before this.” Sometimes a different traumatic experience or a blocking belief needs to be addressed before reprocessing can continue without intellectualization.
These are just a few go to strategies. One of the things I love about EMDR is how versatile and adaptive it can be while still following its key framework and principles. It really is the art of the science.
Summary and Conclusion
My main goal with this article was to expand upon the common cliché of “you’ve gotta feel it to heal it.” I wanted to offer some context as to why this statement is true while also nowhere near as simple as it sounds. Defenses, ego states, or parts, such as intellectualization shouldn’t be met with shame or hostility, or accused of “sabotaging” therapy. This is a very old-school and counterproductive attitude. Intellectualization is doing its job and after decades of its career, it’s become quite good at it. The therapist should be competent enough to smoothly work with defenses.
The way in which intellectualization is addressed can take many forms, but some key principles are developing insight and awareness, exploring the function and fears, and coming to negotiated agreements that are challenging but achievable. This builds confidence and trust in the ability to cope and regulate distress. From my school of therapy, healing is about much more than changing thought processes or developing insight. When intellectualizing parts allow for the reprocessing of deeply held emotions and physical sensations associated with trauma, the relief and freedom is often profound.
If you found value in the content of this article, feel free to share it. If you’ve been interested in beginning EMDR therapy and you’re in the state of Texas, visit my home page or schedule a free 15-minute consultation.
Alex Penrod, MS, LPC, LCDC
Owner | Clinical Director | Therapist
Neuro Nuance Therapy and EMDR, PLLC
References
Schwartz, R.C. (2020) No bad parts. Louisville, CO: Sounds True.
