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First EMDR session… my brain feels numb and I had some wild thoughts in that session. Is this normal? UPDATED

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The_One

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I’m starting EMDR and my target was when my ex told me there’s better looking girls out there than me.
We started with that but my thoughts became really strange. He cheated on me so it’s really complicated I figure. I’ve even traumatized my whole life and the relationship made it worse.
I kept seeing myself with an axe trying to swing at everything. That’s the most disturbing part of it. Then I kept curling up in a ball in my thoughts. Then Libkin park songs kept coming into my head (the really depressing ones)
Now my head feels numb and I’m not even sure if my thoughts were normal or not but I just feel numb. Like my head and my brain feels numb like I don’t wanna think anymore.

Is this normal?
 
How much groundwork did you and your therapist lay out before starting the EMDR, in terms of grounding, coping, transitioning out of the session, etc.?
We’ve done quite a lot. plus I’m on lexapro and I feel like that’s helping me move through all this without too much anxiety and fear. I’m just wondering if everything that happened today is normal.
My feet feel really cold for some reason now.
 
Like my head and my brain feels numb like I don’t wanna think anymore.

Is this normal?
Feeling totally wiped out and unable to do anything but disconnect...yeah, that's pretty common. Someone here might identify with it feeling numb.
I’m not even sure if my thoughts were normal or not
EMDR asks the person to dig into those different layers of memory - people describe it in different ways. Based on all the different accounts of different EMDR experiences I've read about people having, over the however many years I've been here, I definitely feel like lots of things are possible, including what you've described.

Do you know if trauma from earlier in your life is where your PTSD comes from? Or maybe I'm asking, did you experience those images as fact-based memories, or more like emotional associations, or are you not sure? (Just curious).
 
Feeling totally wiped out and unable to do anything but disconnect...yeah, that's pretty common. Someone here might identify with it feeling numb.

EMDR asks the person to dig into those different layers of memory - people describe it in different ways. Based on all the different accounts of different EMDR experiences I've read about people having, over the however many years I've been here, I definitely feel like lots of things are possible, including what you've described.

Do you know if trauma from earlier in your life is where your PTSD comes from? Or maybe I'm asking, did you experience those images as fact-based memories, or more like emotional associations, or are you not sure? (Just curious).
I feel like from earlier in my life it was alot of emotional associations but also fact based too.
I feel like a lot of my trauma also comes from parents who were not emotionally involved in some way in raising me??
I mean there’s so many things that happened when I was younger that were traumatic that weren’t an issue until I got into this relationship (shortly after my dad died suddenly) the combination of my dads death, puberty, having my first relationship, having a real strict mother, being a woman period. Idk. It’s just alot.
 
Now my head feels numb and I’m not even sure if my thoughts were normal or not but I just feel numb. Like my head and my brain feels numb like I don’t wanna think anymore.

Is this normal?
for me? Yep.
It lasts about 24 hours so I've learned to take the day after EMDR as a total sit on the couch and watch cartoon day. Plus EMDR isn't really structured --your brain just kind of goes where it wants to go, regardless of what you think you want to work on. So it's not uncommon to start on one topic and suddenly end up down some rabbit hole.

Eventually it does get a bit more ..organized?
But until then think good self care and curiosity and give yourself lots of rest
 
I don’t remember feeling numb, but that’s a pretty constant state for me. I felt like for about 48 hours that my brain was having its own moving picture show of everything that had ever happened in high speed like an out of control projector. I was oblivious to my surroundings. It would ease off for a bit, my head would clear but hours had melted away, then it would start again but at a slower speed. Honestly it felt like the worst thing that could happen, it’s when I decided to do 2 sessions a week, one to deal with the aftermath. The good news is it does get better and it has helped.
 
I don’t remember feeling numb, but that’s a pretty constant state for me. I felt like for about 48 hours that my brain was having its own moving picture show of everything that had ever happened in high speed like an out of control projector. I was oblivious to my surroundings. It would ease off for a bit, my head would clear but hours had melted away, then it would start again but at a slower speed. Honestly it felt like the worst thing that could happen, it’s when I decided to do 2 sessions a week, one to deal with the aftermath. The good news is it does get better and it has helped.
I really want to work on a phobia I have which is emetophobia and that’s what I was gonna start on. But the day came and I started getting sick just thinking about that. So I told my therapist we gotta start another target. My cousin told me that I was being too ambitious with wanting to start with the worst memory of the emetephobia. So I put it in my container but now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have put it in there. I know for a fact that thinking about it makes me really freak out and I don’t know how I’d be able to do an EMDR session with it
 
Maybe you made the right choice in not starting with it. Now that you’ve experienced EMDR you can work a few more targets out and then hit your biggest one. I did NOT start my hardest one and I am VERY grateful for that decision. The one we started was hard but I think my psyche was more prepared to deal with it.
 
Maybe you made the right choice in not starting with it. Now that you’ve experienced EMDR you can work a few more targets out and then hit your biggest one. I did NOT start my hardest one and I am VERY grateful for that decision. The one we started was hard but I think my psyche was more prepared to deal with it.
True that’s right.
If I can finish a few targets and get more confidence I might ask my therapist if we can conquer the phobia and her help me and guide me through that. I’m not sure what else she can do besides resourcing. It’s def a big trigger for me and really affects my day to day if I’m not on anxiety meds .
 
i've never done emdr, but a recurring theme of my recovery is that i experience whelming gushes of emotions after every single time i pop the boils of repression on yet another pocket of infected repression.

i don't know if i would go so far as calling ^it^, "normal," but it is normal-for-me.
 
UPDATE: Feeling more open , more anxious, want to just sleep in bed but I have work ! Normal after first session?

Yesterday was my first session.
I knew I’d be feeling weird but today I woke up and I’m feeling a little more anxious than normal.
Feeling really open and vulnerable.
Also feeling like I want to sleep the whole day and not do anything. I know I should probably work out today get outside in nature and move around but is this normal?
 
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