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Do you put words to things or have you

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I shouldn't say things in detail? Like if I were going to say things I don't know what I should say like my t has said you can say he's touching me here or making me do x or y and that is vulgar but it is part of what happened.
Plain and simple, say what you need to - get it out with your T, as needed. The comment on vulgarity was meant to say I have always approached that stuff with some delicacy and euphemism unless my T thought more information was needed. My T is a person too and I let her direct me on how much detail she needs.

EMDR does not involve reviewing the details over and over the way exposure therapy does however. In EMDR the first part is to look for where the narrative starts to break down. Where it turns to "shattered memory" is where the trauma likely is. Then you can hold how that memory made you feel in your mind and the reprocessing EMDR does changes how you feel about it and allows it to process. I have never told my T more than what she asked for. Yes we drilled down for details here and there but mainly to get to how I felt about the memory. I walked in thinking I knew where the trauma was and where it came from. The true answer came later, after months of EMDR and it surprised even me.

I found that I never needed to detail much outside the exact moments that caused my trauma. Plus I couldn't detail or tell a narrative because as things came back to me there was the "shattered" memory effect Bessel van der Kolk describes in "The Body Keeps Score" where there are bits and pieces I can give some logical order to. But in the end - I couldn't give you a narrative a,b,c,d story like I could to the memories where I thought trauma was.
 
I've done EMDR for 2 years now. I have a lot of different traumas, including SA. I can't talk about the really bad stuff, especially the stuff you're mentioning here. I can't even go there yet.

When the buzzers stop and my therapist asks me "what are you getting?" I often don't have words either.

but I think my t thinks I need to name it put words to it because it is a way of avoiding for me which blocks processing and so he will ask for clarification

It's not always about what I was remembering when he asks me to tell him what I was getting. It could be that I'm super tense or I feel it in my shoulders, or even that I'm cold. My therapist has told me that I don't even have to remember all of the memories to process them. The EMDR works without a "full" memory and I sometimes just tell him that "I remembered more." So I don't think your expectation that your therapist wants you to name it and put words to it is blocking processing. I might be misunderstanding, but I encourage you to discuss this part with your therapist and ask them about it.
 
I've done EMDR for 2 years now. I have a lot of different traumas, including SA. I can't talk about the really bad stuff, especially the stuff you're mentioning here. I can't even go there yet.

When the buzzers stop and my therapist asks me "what are you getting?" I often don't have words either.



It's not always about what I was remembering when he asks me to tell him what I was getting. It could be that I'm super tense or I feel it in my shoulders, or even that I'm cold. My therapist has told me that I don't even have to remember all of the memories to process them. The EMDR works without a "full" memory and I sometimes just tell him that "I remembered more." So I don't think your expectation that your therapist wants you to name it and put words to it is blocking processing. I might be misunderstanding, but I encourage you to discuss this part with your therapist and ask them about it.
EMDR didn’t work for me BTW. I went through a lot of build up about it, but it didn’t do anything.
 
I did discuss this with my therapist and he said that the processing is supposed to take the emotional intensity out of the memory so that I can process the memory and then we can do work on making sense of the impact once I am more able to engage with the memory of what happened without it being so emotionally charged which is what will happen when it is more processed. So I am not sure if that makes sense but it makes sense to me.

We have also discussed that I have been kind of disconnected and having to deny what happened for a long time so talking about it is sort of a way of giving myself a voice or that part of me a voice which I do think can be important. And sharing the shame sort of thing.

He also explained that people do say things and gave some examples which made me feel like at least he has heard those sorts of things before. But yes the naming isn't about processing but for me it might be about allowing myself to recognise it happened.

My mind gets so overwhelmed and tired at the same time after emdr like I struggle to think clearly the day or so afterwards. I am sure that is normal but it is tiring
 
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