I haven't done EMDR but my therapist put the brakes on us talking about trauma towards the end of last year.
Whenever we tried to do it, I would generally dissociate to the point where I couldn't stand or speak or I'd get so spooked and would shake violently for an hour - basically I was retraumatising myself. It was a pretty brutal experience and would write off the rest of my week. It was frustrating and exhausting but I was determined to keep trying because I thought that was the point of why I was going to therapy every week.
When she told me that she didn't think doing that work was was in service to me and that, instead, it was harming me, I was gutted. Really upset. And angry. I felt like an epic failure. I felt that she was giving up on me. I didn't see what the point of therapy was if I couldn't work on what had brought me to therapy in the first place. She said that my resistance hadn't really softened in the time we had worked together (about two years at that point) in the way that it needed to in order for us to do that work and for me to be able to heal. I felt devastated by the idea that I would never heal.
I decided to stick with therapy but it was a rocky few months - partly because of how upset I was about the trauma stuff now being off the table and partly due to some other things as well.
And then in March this year, something happened, which triggered me badly (not in therapy) and, this time, something was different. When my therapist and I talked it through together, we both agreed that something had shifted and that there was now a window of opportunity for us to work on it. So, it was suddenly back on the table. Suddenly, it was possible.
To be honest, we still haven't really gone there in a major way but I've had quite a lot going on and I think she is being quite cautious so that I'm not suddenly plunged back to dissociating, shaking, being retraumatised and flooring myself for a week. It still feels frustrating because I feel impatient and just want to be able to do a deeper dive. But I also understand that we need to tread carefully. My intellectual adult self says "I want to deep dive into the traumas, I'm ready, come on, let's get on with it!" But the part of me that gets triggered when we try clearly doesn't agree! I still often feel frustrated with myself and annoyed at her for not pushing harder and deflated because I'm not doing therapy "well enough". But I know those judgements aren't helpful. We can't force these things to happen. And, as others have said, I think it is a sign of a therapist's ethical approach and of their desire to truly put their client's needs first, to say "stop" if continuing along a path is actually damaging us, not helping us.
So, I guess this long post is to say, yes, something very similar happened to me and it was hard - I felt very sad, bitterly disappointed, angry (with her and me), a bit abandoned in a way because it felt like she was just giving up, panicked because I thought that meant I wouldn't get any better. But it's also to say, this could just be a temporary pause. It may just be a "not now" not a "not ever."
