freakofnurture
Platinum Member
Caution: Verbosity ahead.
((tl;wr: Had first session with work on positive memory, result was unimpressive but okay; next appointment will involve bad memories. Am already sh*tting myself. ))
So, two weeks ago I got a phone call from the chief psychiatrist of the ward where I had my 7 weeks of therapy this year. She told me she's learning EMDR now and needs some guinea pi... uh, volunteer patients to give treatments to for practice. The sessions will be recorded for evaluation by her supervisor. It's all payed for by the hospital as part of her ongoing training, no health insurance companies are involved.
I thought I'd give it a try, especially since I still don't have a therapist and feel like I'm stagnating - though I'm actually doing surprisingly well atm. I don't have that many symptoms and am still actively improving on concentration, ability to stick to a task without tiring and sitting in cafés.
Today we had a bit of a talk concerning therapy planning and also a bit of EMDR. I think I was more scared of it than I realised. I like having so little symptoms. But I need to face the problem because it only takes one thought held a bit too long to send me back into a streak of nightmares and depression. So much aversion, ugh.
She said we could start with some more recent distressing experiences if I still don't have access to my emotions concerning more traumatic events. But I don't feel distress remembering how horrible it felt on the last group therapy session before I discharged myself from the clinic. I experience a lot more distress when I remember things that I did wrong. I should tell her about that on my next appointment.
However cool I was when we sat down to actually start working on a distressing memory, it was due to some slight dissociation. The kind where you stop thinking in terms of 'consequences', choke the handle of your motorcycle like it killed a kitten and then just drive straight ahead, ignoring any turns that stupid road might make. Dissociation isn't particularly helpful during EMDR, so the therapist said, 'We could work on anchoring a positive memory, too.' Boy, was I all for that.
So I had to think of a nice, happy memory - I chose one of my husband being goofy and making fun of the cat - and describe it, explain why it's happy etc. Then I had to choose a positive thought about myself. I chose 'I always work as hard as I can', but the therapist didn't like it (it's too specific, she said). So she read some examples from her list and I chose 'I am okay the way I am'. Then I had to rate - on a scale 0 to 7 - how accurate that thought felt when I was imagining the happy memory. I said 4 - 5.
After that I had to look where in my body I felt that the memory was a happy one and focus on that feeling, the positive thought and the memory. With that part checked there came the EMDR finger following stuff where I had to follow her fingers moving left to right and back in front of my eyes while letting my thoughts flow freely.
She did multiple sets of the finger waving exercise with me and didn't seem particularly thrilled that I didn't report any marked or lasting improvement on the experienced accuracy of the positive thought in conjunction with the happy memory. It went up to 7 for a fraction of a second after the third set, but once I started thinking again, 4 - 5 was all there was.
I don't know if she seriously expected me to start completely endorsing a thought that I couldn't even have just some months ago after thirty seconds of hand waving. But apparently she did. On our next appointment she wants me to look at what it is that's 'blocking' me. I'd say it's the reality of the fact that I am not okay the way I am, and that I don't want to be the way I am. Maybe I should choose more humble a thought for the next session, but 'I am okay' was the first on a long list of thoughts that didn't make me gag emotionally (like 'I am strong', 'I will get through this', 'I am loveable', holy sh*it, why doesn't she ask me to run a marathon on my hands instead?).
When I walked home after the appointment I began to feel better, though (it didn't really surprise me, my positive emotions always need a bit of time to emerge). It was a bit of a shift in perspective, like 'I am as okay as I can be at the moment' and 'All that's not okay about me is PTSD and I am not to blame for that' and also 'I don't care about other people's criteria for what makes a person okay'. These are thoughts that I can handle, and thoughts that I can agree with. I try my best; I am working hard. It's basically the thought I suggested in the beginning of the session...
The whole method seems a bit fishy on first sight, but really, what the therapist did to me was exposition, the practice of certain thoughts and a bit of zen meditation, which are tried and trusted to work for many people, and which I experienced working for me, too. We'll see. I still have to survive my first 'real' session with distressing memories.
I'd be interested if other people here noticed any delay in the positive effects of EMDR like I seemed to do.
((tl;wr: Had first session with work on positive memory, result was unimpressive but okay; next appointment will involve bad memories. Am already sh*tting myself. ))
So, two weeks ago I got a phone call from the chief psychiatrist of the ward where I had my 7 weeks of therapy this year. She told me she's learning EMDR now and needs some guinea pi... uh, volunteer patients to give treatments to for practice. The sessions will be recorded for evaluation by her supervisor. It's all payed for by the hospital as part of her ongoing training, no health insurance companies are involved.
I thought I'd give it a try, especially since I still don't have a therapist and feel like I'm stagnating - though I'm actually doing surprisingly well atm. I don't have that many symptoms and am still actively improving on concentration, ability to stick to a task without tiring and sitting in cafés.
Today we had a bit of a talk concerning therapy planning and also a bit of EMDR. I think I was more scared of it than I realised. I like having so little symptoms. But I need to face the problem because it only takes one thought held a bit too long to send me back into a streak of nightmares and depression. So much aversion, ugh.
She said we could start with some more recent distressing experiences if I still don't have access to my emotions concerning more traumatic events. But I don't feel distress remembering how horrible it felt on the last group therapy session before I discharged myself from the clinic. I experience a lot more distress when I remember things that I did wrong. I should tell her about that on my next appointment.
However cool I was when we sat down to actually start working on a distressing memory, it was due to some slight dissociation. The kind where you stop thinking in terms of 'consequences', choke the handle of your motorcycle like it killed a kitten and then just drive straight ahead, ignoring any turns that stupid road might make. Dissociation isn't particularly helpful during EMDR, so the therapist said, 'We could work on anchoring a positive memory, too.' Boy, was I all for that.
So I had to think of a nice, happy memory - I chose one of my husband being goofy and making fun of the cat - and describe it, explain why it's happy etc. Then I had to choose a positive thought about myself. I chose 'I always work as hard as I can', but the therapist didn't like it (it's too specific, she said). So she read some examples from her list and I chose 'I am okay the way I am'. Then I had to rate - on a scale 0 to 7 - how accurate that thought felt when I was imagining the happy memory. I said 4 - 5.
After that I had to look where in my body I felt that the memory was a happy one and focus on that feeling, the positive thought and the memory. With that part checked there came the EMDR finger following stuff where I had to follow her fingers moving left to right and back in front of my eyes while letting my thoughts flow freely.
She did multiple sets of the finger waving exercise with me and didn't seem particularly thrilled that I didn't report any marked or lasting improvement on the experienced accuracy of the positive thought in conjunction with the happy memory. It went up to 7 for a fraction of a second after the third set, but once I started thinking again, 4 - 5 was all there was.
I don't know if she seriously expected me to start completely endorsing a thought that I couldn't even have just some months ago after thirty seconds of hand waving. But apparently she did. On our next appointment she wants me to look at what it is that's 'blocking' me. I'd say it's the reality of the fact that I am not okay the way I am, and that I don't want to be the way I am. Maybe I should choose more humble a thought for the next session, but 'I am okay' was the first on a long list of thoughts that didn't make me gag emotionally (like 'I am strong', 'I will get through this', 'I am loveable', holy sh*it, why doesn't she ask me to run a marathon on my hands instead?).
When I walked home after the appointment I began to feel better, though (it didn't really surprise me, my positive emotions always need a bit of time to emerge). It was a bit of a shift in perspective, like 'I am as okay as I can be at the moment' and 'All that's not okay about me is PTSD and I am not to blame for that' and also 'I don't care about other people's criteria for what makes a person okay'. These are thoughts that I can handle, and thoughts that I can agree with. I try my best; I am working hard. It's basically the thought I suggested in the beginning of the session...
The whole method seems a bit fishy on first sight, but really, what the therapist did to me was exposition, the practice of certain thoughts and a bit of zen meditation, which are tried and trusted to work for many people, and which I experienced working for me, too. We'll see. I still have to survive my first 'real' session with distressing memories.
I'd be interested if other people here noticed any delay in the positive effects of EMDR like I seemed to do.
