• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Did EMDR largely resolve your CPTSD and if so, how long did it take?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Friday: yes I want a magic wand. I am searching for a way to accelerate fixing things as I am having problems in life that I just cannot deal with without my brain being functional. I even started looking into law of attraction as a Hail Mary.
Frieda: that 8-10 number is what makes you hope it will be quick yes. I am nearing 8 and it’s just a dent though.. a hopeful dent and still quicker dent than I would have done without it but still, it is a dent.
Chris-duck: it seems the actual emdr processing bit takes very little time in itself, yes. The part that takes loads of time (and requires a skilful T) is the navigating and deciphering what where how needs to be processed, knowing what to do when a block comes etc. Oh yeah and also just getting to the table of starting it too. I went years and years thinking No way will I see anyone, I will sort my own head out.

Renly: Neurofeedback sounds promising yes, maybe biofeedback too. I am interested in energy healing too - I have had very good help from this though it depends on the practitioner. I see my T today so will ask her what I can do to accelerate things. I don’t want to cram too much in if it would screw things up.

Btw how do you thank someone’s post on this forum??
 
Thanks. I fear years ahead of me…

I am thinking of reading EMDR and Getting Past Your Past by Francine Shapiro so I can do EMDR on my own as well as with the T.

Has anyone here tried to do EMDR to themselves? I googled how often can you do EMDR and someone wrote as much as you want! But so far I have found after a session the changes keep coming through my head for maybe a week-10 days. So I wonder if doing it daily like meditation would screw things up?

Or did you do any other therapies in conjunction with the EMDR? I am thinking of neurofeedback, maybe tapping.

How to fix things as fast as possible?!
It's a journey.....not a race. If you conceptualize therapy as a long process like a journey.....you can console yourself that you'll always be "learning" and improving. If you see therapy as something finite....something you need to hurry and do and get over, .I'm afraid you may have a harder time getting/staying stable.....and finding contentment with who you are. JMHO
 
TruthSeeker: see life as a journey, yes.
But sometimes when you aren’t at a level to handle stuff that comes up in life that can threaten basic stuff it is an urgent need to reach a certain level of competency. One block I have that keeps detrailing me is freezing around confrontation and I keep getting steamrolled and revictimised. I am currently facing a vicious landlord who is trying to evict me and I just have to unfreeze and deal with it - I won’t be stable if I’m homeless. (She became vicious after months and months - years? Of terrible maintenance, me being the frozen steamrolled one, then me blowing up like a volcano > landlord got butthurt and became vindictive and vicious.)

Btw my T said also that EMDR cannot be rushed..
I think in my case I may even be paused a bit. I plan to get the Shapiro EMDR books to figure out out better what is going on but I think my safe place to go back to has been displaced from what EMDR progress has been made. The reconfiguring in my brain has altered it and it has to be reinstated in an updated form -whatever that is which I haven’t figured out yet. I’m in a transitiony/ floaty state where an old pattern has been disrupted but a new one not yet replaced it. You really do need a skilful T to navigate stuff properly..
 
That’s wonderful for you, Heather, I’m glad you’ve found peace. It’s encouraging. 8 months doesn’t seem long in the scheme of things. My next therapy session is in January and I’m still in a strange no man’s land of floating. Hopefully I’ll find some more solid ground soon. Otherwise I’ll just have to hang until January..
 
I have started EMDR and thought it would be a quick duration if effective. But now I am not sure and wondering the range of times it has taken others, or if you’re still doing it, how long you’ve been doing it for so far.
Hi,

I have also recently started EMDR with T and today I was listening to Deepak Chopra's Healing meditation. He was talking about becoming unbounded and at that moment I was on my yogamat on the floor, spreading my arms,with my eyes closed and I could see a thick rope around both my wirsts and could feel the rope cutting in my skin. After I could finally open my eyes and get of my yogamat I crawled on my hands and knees to the square leather thing where I normally put my feet up when I am reading. I crossed my arms on it and rested my forehead on my wrists and closed my eyes also still on my knees. And then when I wanted to get up... I could not move... I wanted to get up... but my body started to have some sort of convulsions. This lasted for a few minutes but feit much longer. After the convulsions stopped, it took several minutes before my body could move again. Is this normal after EMDR?
 
EMDR is one of the few things I have found where the effects are worth the side effects.
Not to be done alone, if doing it alone even qualifies as EMDR. I would step back from that cliff, quickly.
But, if you want to try self hypnosis there are many forms. I can get through a bad patch with mindfulness. Doesn't solve anything but gets you from here to there. Another one I like is Vagas nerve stimulation, still exploring that one but in a time where I could have easily spiraled out I was able to prep for what I knew was coming in a short time by using it before the shit hit. I think it has potential but doesn't do much if the stress levels are lower on the scale or if used after a stressor event.
I got introduced to aromatherapy and I think it has value as a kind of "trail of breadcrumbs" to a place where you were once able to be calm and at peace. First, you have to attain that place, and then reinforce the memory of being there by adding a scent. On some level, smelling that scent will help you get back. That's my take on it, I know others will say that certain scents are valuable for certain problems and approach it from a totally different point of view. Theres value wherever it is found, but for me, I find it most useful as a reminder, and if every breath reminds you of last weeks session where you were calm and at peace, how can the aromatherapy as a trail back there be wrong?
 
EMDR is one of the few things I have found where the effects are worth the side effects.
Not to be done alone, if doing it alone even qualifies as EMDR. I would step back from that cliff, quickly.
But, if you want to try self hypnosis there are many forms. I can get through a bad patch with mindfulness. Doesn't solve anything but gets you from here to there. Another one I like is Vagas nerve stimulation, still exploring that one but in a time where I could have easily spiraled out I was able to prep for what I knew was coming in a short time by using it before the shit hit. I think it has potential but doesn't do much if the stress levels are lower on the scale or if used after a stressor event.
I got introduced to aromatherapy and I think it has value as a kind of "trail of breadcrumbs" to a place where you were once able to be calm and at peace. First, you have to attain that place, and then reinforce the memory of being there by adding a scent. On some level, smelling that scent will help you get back. That's my take on it, I know others will say that certain scents are valuable for certain problems and approach it from a totally different point of view. Theres value wherever it is found, but for me, I find it most useful as a reminder, and if every breath reminds you of last weeks session where you were calm and at peace, how can the aromatherapy as a trail back there be wrong?
Thank you for the aromatherapy info. Any sort of starters pack that is good for beginners? 🤓
 
@Bodacious001 I have found the effects from an EMDR session keep coming for up to 10 days? After the session. The experience varies. The experience you had sounds as though it may have been unpleasant in the moment. Hopefully that has passed now. I think after a treatment things reconfigure and you could be “steps back” for little while as your brain dismantles patterns to rebuild them more healthily.
It is still more than another week until my sessions start with the T again. This whole time since last session in November I have been feeling deracinated, I’m holding out because I know I have an appointment with T coming up and I’m hoping things will get sorted there. The thing is I think my safe place/ grounding spot? Has been ruptured so I don’t know if going back in to EMDR straight away will be possible. The thought of having no safe spot to retreat to when it goes too far is terrifying.

@enough -I would agree that I would stick to EMDR with a T - a skilled T.
Thanks for the ideas of what things work/ have helped you.
 
I can say it didn’t work. But that was in a setting that maybe wasn’t comfortable and the way they did it, which was by the book, just didn’t work for me. I just couldn’t do what the therapist was asking me to do. I couldn’t feel it. On the other hand, when my current therapist did it with me I thought it was a lot more effective, or at least interesting, but we did it sporadically. I’d even say I liked it. It didn’t fix me though. I don’t feel it re programmed my brain so the effects of my trauma were gone or made significantly less . Supposedly it does that for some people. I wasn’t one of them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top