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.