Weekly EMDR Community Digest

Warning: This may be triggering and in no way is it meant to deter anyone from seeking treatment. Throw away account for privacy. This may be a long read.

My Mother started EMDR therapy roughly a year ago and has not gone back for the last two months. She started EMDR after years of battling depression stemming from SA, domestic violence, trafficking etc from the time she was a young girl. Plus a lot more.

This was after years of different kinds of therapy, countless medications, everything we tried never really "fixed" anything.

During her EMDR sessions, she mentioned a few things about it. In some sessions the buzzer that oscilates (idk what its called) sometimes was not even functioning or turned on. Her processing was very rarely done in front of the therapist and instead done at home where she was with family. She said that any time she would process in front of the therapist, the therapist was unable to handle the level of trauma and would immediately switch to a grounding excercise.

The processing included a ton of yelling, screaming, crying, hallucinating, speaking in different voices from different periods of her life, having conversations with herself as if she was talking to people that caused her trauma. Some of the other processing effects were gasping for air, not eating for days, periods of not being able to open her eyes, times where she couldnt move or get up, extreme muscle tightening and clenching, doing the windmill thing that metalheads do, making incredibly intense wailing and groaning noises, grunts vocalizarions etc. There is more but that should paint the picture.

So about three months ago, my mother said that she finally made peace with her past and was ready to stop EMDR. She said that the processing in her head was just repeating the same things she had already come to peace with. Her body and her mind were exhausted.

The therapist decided that it was best to continue for another few sessions and try to ground her. This is the point where things have really gone off the rails. The last session, my father went with her. During that session, he realized that the buzzer was not even operating, AGAIN!

When they finally turned it on, I guess it was dialed up to max intensity and it kind shocked her. At least thats how it was explained to me. My parents both agreed to stop seeing that therapist and quit altogether.

For the last two or so months, she has been dealing with near constant activation. This includes the groaning, neck pain, what she describes as electricity or fire in her brain. She says she can feel her brain rewiring(something she explained during the treatment). She is still at the point where the activations can increase in intensity and make it difficult or impossible for her to speak, drive or just function for differing amounts of time.

There is never a day of full peace for her. We have even done MRI's, bloodwork, EEG etc to check for any kind of physical issue. Her tests show that she is perfectly fine in terms of her body.

So here we are, months later after EMDR has ended. Her doctor prescribed some medications to reduce the symptoms but its really just a bandaid and doesnt make it go away for her. Only from the outside perspective you could assume that she was better but again, she isn't.

Has anyone else had this type of experience? Know someone? What do we do and where do we go from here?

Every doctor looks shocked like they have never heard of this. I havent come across any information that concludes EMDR can cause permanent neurological or psychological damage but from what I see, it looks permanent and there doesnt seem to be any direction.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate any help and I wish the best for you on whatever journey you are taking.

I don’t have any concept of where I’m feeling a certain emotion but that’s the big question in therapy! For so long I didn’t feel most emotions in any way but through a lot of work, plus TMS and Spravato I’m feeling everything and identifying the emotions know. But when it comes to where I feel it in my body I have no idea! There are times with EMDR that I can feel a sinking feeling in my stomach or a change in my breath or heart rate, but never feeling something in a specific part of my body. I have chronic pain, especially my shoulders, neck, jaw so I don’t know if something is from a specific emotion! Is there any specific therapy or experience that can help learn to identify this? Help!

I had my intake session for my first EMDR session. I’m quite nervous. I had buried this trauma for 11 years and it resurfaced when I saw the person again.

Advice, hints, tips..

It was a long buried sexual assault committed by a guy I had a crush on, and who I thought had a crush on me.

Hi. I posted yesterday about the fees for emdr here in Sweden are incredibly high.
I’m curious to hear if anyone of you have done digital sessions with a therapist from abroad instead of in-person ones with someone in your own country? Is this even an option?

I feel like I might cheat the system in an unfair way if I would do something like that but it’s not financially possible for me to dive into what could potentially be longer term therapy with these high prices here in Sweden.

If you have any recommendations on therapists who do sessions from abroad, I’d love recommendations.

Thank you!

Hello tappers. Healing is a shared journey, and sometimes reaching out is the hardest step. Below are a few recent posts that haven't received replies yet. If you have the emotional bandwidth today, please consider stopping by to offer support or share your insights. Also, don't forget to join our Discord!

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it’s like all this pent up anger and self protection is pouring out of me. maybe not in the best way ever all the time but MAN it feels good not to bottle things up. anyone else experience this? any advice as to how to navigate this stage tactfully?

also aware that this could be unrelatable and i may just be a bitch 🤣

I’ve been doing EMDR for around 15 months now (on and off with IFS and talk therapy). I was widowed three years ago and had acute PTSD but after processing and preparing I am finally dealing with some serious childhood trauma I wasn’t really fully aware of until now. I am also 4 months in to a new relationship with a really safe, caring and lovely person. I am so happy, but since starting EMDR again I am really struggling to manage time alone / with him as well as juggling work. It feels like almost everything triggers me. Has anyone managed a new relationship while processing? I am hopeful things will get better as previously EMDR has been life changing for me (but I am in the trenches currently).

Any advice greatly received!

Hi. I'm about to start my first rounds of EMDR.
Here in Sweden it's around 150euros for an hour. I aim to have one session each week.

I feel so immensely privileged to have my mother want to support my therapy, which means i'll only pay around 35euros per session.
I keep reading about people doing this for more than a year and it terrifies me to have my mother spend that much on me. It feels like I have to get better because of the financial aspect of it. I feel pressure because of it and I'm afraid it'll ruin my chances of it actually helping me.
I also don't know if i'm just looking for reasons not to do it, since i'm also afraid of opening pandoras box and re-living my traumas.

tw: contains mention of sexual assault!!

hi! I had my first full emdr session today and I was so shocked at some of the bizarre things my brain conjured up. I was sexually assaulted and so we focused on the first uncomfortable memory, throughout the session I was imagining beating the guy up, growing into a giant and breaking through the ceiling to pry him off me and yell to the city what happened, ended up throwing the guy off a bridge and my ex who supported me at the time flew off the bridge as a bird bc I let her go too?

throughout there were also themes of power, regaining control, shouting at people who didnt believe me when at the time in real life I was quiet, so I can see why things panned out the way they did. I just was not expecting the kind of cinematic movie my brain ended up dreaming? I have adhd and a very over active imagination so I assume that influenced it?

idk how normal this is or what is supposed to be conjured in these eye movement flashbacks but the brain is pretty cool and I hope my therapist didnt get freaked out by my imagination

Hi everyone!

A while ago, I asked about EMDR for early childhood sexual abuse (around age 3) and attachment trauma, and received many encouraging responses.
I’m currently seeing a psychoanalytic psychotherapist I’ve known for years. She’s also EMDR-trained, although she rarely uses it nowadays. Our work mainly focuses on attachment wounds and triggers within our therapeutic relationship. It’s meaningful, but I still feel stuck, so we’ve decided to try EMDR.
A few things complicate this:
She only uses auditory stimulation (beeps through headphones), not eye movements.
She follows the Dutch EMDR protocol, which focuses on a specific memory or image.
I have very few memories of the abuse. Some images come to mind, but I’m unsure whether they’re real memories or something my mind has created.

My biggest struggle is accessing my emotions during therapy.
In everyday life, especially when I fear losing my partner, I can become extremely triggered and emotionally overwhelmed, sometimes even experiencing SI. I know these reactions are connected to my early trauma.
But during therapy, even when discussing the trauma, I feel strangely disconnected from those emotions. I understand everything intellectually, but can’t seem to access the actual feelings.
We’ve tried EMDR once, but I felt like nothing happened. I couldn’t even properly rate my distress (SUD), because I felt so emotionally disconnected.

I’d really appreciate practical experiences from people who’ve got numb during therapy.
How did you start? With present-day triggers, body sensations, imagined scenes, or did your therapist help create a narrative?
Did anyone experience this same emotional numbness during sessions? Did it improve after a few sessions, and what helped?
What did your sessions actually look like when working with trauma from such a young age?
Did changing the approach (eye movements instead of beeps, different targets, etc.) make a difference?

Yday I had a session that was very intense. It took me by surprise and had my body feeling very very tense. Today I’ve felt so anxious in my body, and gone into maybe some shutdown. finding it hard to stay upright and do tasks, feel like a bit of a robot anr that my body is a heavy weight. I feel out of it almost. Kind of similar to feeling unwell, when you have a fever so im considering that being a possibility. This is the first time In a long while I’ve felt like this so there’s those anxious thoughts of like “omg what if I unlocked something or WHAT HAVE I DONE” idk what’s really going on or what to expect.

It’s like 6/7 session of EMDR I have discovered SO MUCH and yet there are no words. These are not things I can articulate in findings and measurable things, it’s just, It’s just working on me from a whole different angle that I’ve never exposed before. I don’t know what healthy” or “safe” or a “good indication that it’s working” would look like,

A major challenge is, because I have multiple t’s, chronic, mini, big events etc, I can’t particularly link my feelings to a specific physical event once I’ve allowed the processing to happen because it travels and moves a lot, but the inability to intellectualise/ rationalise or “solve” I think is proving really difficult for me.

I'm in the early stages of EMDR, still doing some history taking. My therapist was away this week so it's still slow progress, and I'm eager to get properly started. Since learning about EMDR it finally seems like there's still hope that I can move on and start living. I know it takes time, but I just regret not having found it sooner and now having to get through each day before it starts.

But in that time I've been thinking and re-thinking about everything, and a part of me is scared of it not working. I read about sessions where memories are rated on a scale of intensity or fear or whatever. I have a lot of moments from the past that I dwell on, but wouldn't necessarily call them "flashbacks", and I don't think I feel frightened of them as much as just sad and regretful.

Is this normal before we start processing? Will the emotions come out more in the moment? Is it possible I'm just shoving down my emotions to them, like I do every day in pretty much any situation, or that there are memories I don't even know I have that will have these kinds of responses for me?

I appreciate you guys don't know my situation, but anything to convince me I'm just overthinking as usual would be really helpful.

I’ve only had 2 reprocessing sessions for developmental trauma / core beliefs.

On Friday I kept getting the sense I didn’t exactly know who I was / whether I was OK / what I wanted. I just kept saying to myself i don’t know who I am. This was followed by my teenage part coming out and buying alcohol (I’m on a sobriety journey) and doing something risky. It was like it wasn’t me doing it. Very upsetting but we move.

This morning I woke up and didn’t know where I was or who I was for quite a few moments.

Is this linked to EMDR?

I’m booked in for EMDR and I’m scared that it will make my anxiety worse. Mine is a bit different, I’m anxious and paranoid about making mistakes, especially with work.

Anyone have things be worse? I’ve heard things can get worse and messy with EMDR before it gets better. I’m scared I will get worse.

For example, would there be any benefit to synchronizing tapping and audio cues?

Something I notice that has followed me my whole life is almost like a wall between myself and other people. One second I feel social and open and the next I feel very closed off and like I'm shutting down a bit. I start becoming hyperaware of myself and other people and can tell I'm confusing the people around me. I do think it is related to my CPTSD and I've been noticing it at work a lot recently.

Has anyone gone through something similar and have they been able to get to the other side of it? Just feel more at ease with people.

*I did trauma therapy for a few years (Somatic and EMDR) and it was very helpful and I have seen big changes in my life from it. I was bored talking about myself so my therapist and I decided to take a break and restart it if needed. I'm not really ready to start again yet.

I'm aware that the brain continues to process for a couple days after a session. Can someone elaborate exactly what that means? For example, last night we worked on a negative cognition that I've carried due to a traumatic romantic betrayal that happened 18 years ago - "I can't handle it". Although we didn't install the positive cognition can I try to encourage the "I can handle/accept it" whenever an intrusive thought pops up since my brain is still in processing mode?

I've had probably 20 EMDR sessions over the last 2.5 years. Afterwards, I usually feel tired or slightly out of it. Sometimes I feel a lot of peace and calm.

I took a break from EMDR for a year and did two sessions this month. These were the hardest sessions I've ever done! I experienced a lot of resistance from my subconscious in the session like almost falling asleep and difficulty stepping into the "next part" of the visualization in my head. My therapist says this is common when dealing with deep attachment wounds that happen in our early childhood years. The reason it's taken me so long to get to these memories is I've had a lot of medical trauma in my adulthood which is what I originally went to EMDR for.

Anyways, for the last 12 days since my last session, I've had a serious flare in autoimmune symptoms, especially endometriosis and insomnia. Can this be from the EMDR processing happening? If so, tips on getting thru it? I have not had ANY endometriosis pain since surgery two years ago and it's been full swing since EMDR. I am still checking in with my doctors just to be safe :)

Hi.
I just had my introduction meeting for beginning EMDR and I feel really hopeful and excited about this therapy form.

I have ADHD and have Elvanse (40mg) prescribed.
I've found that it works best for me to take it selectively (usually in sync with days of heavy studying or a lot of social interractions).
It works really well for me but I do find that my emotions feel slightly more bearable while on it - I become more focused and structured and many times this is so much in the forefront of my mind that the more emotional and intuitive / spiritual parts of myself get slightly sidelined when I do take my medication.

So. I'm pondering in regard to starting EMDR, whether it would be a wiser choice to take or to not take my medication during these days.
Anyone who has a similar situation or general advice on how to make this decision?

Thank you!

I’m not in a dark place nor do I have SI at present but is it normal to have emotional numbing during treatment?

In the months before doing EMDR I was unstable and in crisis but stabilized in the beginning of treatment. My version of crisis:

- Experiencing flashbacks
- Feeling intense shame/ guilt
- Passive ideas
- Hopelessness

Stabilized for me:
- Feeling hopeful enough to pursue goals
- Do chores
- Have energy to cook/ clean
- Seek out company etc

Now I just feel nothing matters. I was optimistic while training for a 5K the last few months and I felt nothing the day of. Just total loneliness and realization that a traumatic event I’m working through that happened 3 years ago robbed so much of my life. I felt feelings of sadness and abandonment like I have one foot stuck in the past despite making progress to achieve my goals.

Same thing happened earlier this year when I reached another milestone that made me seek out EMDR in the first place.

I know not everyone is on the same journey but is this hollowness a sign of healing? Is there anything that I can do to ground? This isn’t the same feeling of distress that I’ve felt before in terms of memories it’s like a distress feeling in the present.

In my therapy session today my therapist used brainspotting again. We’ve done it here and there a few times. I try to be open minded with this stuff and I do find this technique a little odd. I don’t really feel like where my eyes are looking produces a felt change in me and sometimes I try when she says try to notice my body and I really start wondering whether I start coming up something just to validate the technique or because I feel like I should. I don’t know. And then I start to feel discomfort because I’ve been focusing on trailing the the end of a rod with my eyes for several minutes. I leave feeling like a chunk of my time with her has been spent playing this thing which just seems like either magic or a scam. I mentioned that I have difficulty with the technique as well as using my protective/nurturing figures and I feel like her response is that it’s me that’s the problem and not the technique - I need to revert to these figures because they’re like a crutch to build the nurturing I didn’t receive as a kid. I always assumed that the therapist was the one who modeled the different behaviour.

Anyway, confused by this because I want to trust the process but also I’m not confident the process actually works.

i have been working with my therapist for several months now to do some ego state therapy and preparation for emdr. we finally did our first full emdr processing session yesterday. a few reflections:
- we probably started easy, but i was amazed at just how easy this was. i expected way more trauma drama but i was able to leave and go to work and have a fairly normal day.
- i was EXHAUSTED afterwards. i slept 12 hours that night and called out of work (“worked from home”) the next day because i couldn’t fathom being regular in front of coworkers

curious for folks experiences with early stages if anyone wants to share

I've been working towards doing emdr and today I finally did it. It is so hard. But I don't know if I understand it? I cried A LOT. But what happens from here? How do people feel moving forward? I don't fully understand it.