EMDR Therapy, Dissociation, Flashbacks And Self-Harm

[disconnect]

The past week has been complete hell. I'm crying all the time, feeling distant again, crying constantly about every little, tiny thing that's upsetting me and taking my anger out on my T. I've text her so often today and she says she thinks I need a break. I took that as abandonment (funny how I always make that connection now..) and I felt so alone. EMDR has really stirred things up for me and I'm scared now that everytime I zone out, I'm going to have a scary 'revelation'. My T thinks I've hidden something deep inside that is preventing me from moving on. I just feel stuck and I hate that feeling. Everything's messed up and I feel so unsafe and fragile. I'm really, really struggling and I don't know why.

 

[Iam]

You are struggling because you are unearthing stuff you have buried for a long time. It's scary to do that Disconnect. The closer you get the harder it gets.....the good news is, on the stuff you already have processed....those won't hit you so hard anymore ;o) The stuff that is hard today will be easier and hopefully laid to rest tomorrow. Keep forging ahead Disconnect, take a break when you or your T think you should. I think we all need breathers, time to absorbed the hard things that have exhausted us. It's all part of the process, including the breaks ;o)

 

[disconnect]

Thank you for saying that it's part of the process, as I keep thinking how I feel or hopw I react isn't 'normal', you know? I have this thing in my head that I can't be fixed.

 

[dharmaBum]

I've been receiving EMDR for 6-9 months weekly, and more and less frequently. I realized that the treatment provides me relief, but that it also brings deep seated trauma and the accompanying affective flashbacks to the forefront. Sometimes continually. At times I have requested more or less treatments in order to assimilate and normalize between treatments. When the trauma engagement is super-high, as you have described, I have sometimes had treatments every two or three days. I have also designed and adapted EMDR exercises to use for desensitizing/deescalating trauma-based reactions when I am at home/outside of treatment. They absolute help me, and I will gladly share them via this thread if you are interested, or you can search my profile for the posts. Only you know what is right, helpful, and timely for you though.

When I first started counseling for PTSD my provider said I was not stabilized enough for exposure therapy. He didn't exactly use those terms, and I didn't believe him. But I have been through EMDR reactions like you are describing (am kind of in one right now) and can see how that could have been very dangerous in the beginning when I was highly suicidal and thought that all of the childhood abuse I experienced was my fault.

Keep in contact with your mental health provider and/or seek additional professional care. I'm glad you can use this forum to get feedback when you need it!

 

[disconnect]

Wow, that sounds really useful. If you could share your thoughts and techniques that you've found have been of great help, I'd definately appreciate your input.

My T said she'd spoken to her supervisor and told me her supervisor had thought that EMDR focussing on the past was being blocked by something else. We did a scale thing about how true I felt some statements were and how I felt if I were to solve said problem. The conclusion was that it all came back to my parents and how they spoke to me and treated me when I was growing up. We concentrated the EMDR on that and she made me think about telling them how angry and distressed they had and still do, make me feel.

I feel incredibly vulnerable at the moment. Lost and alone. Very angry and anxious. It's so difficult. I'm meant to be doing some exams this week and I'm getting wound up at the slightest things. I've noticed that I'm retreating back into 'Little Girl' me a lot more often lately and I feel stuck at that age right now. I lie in bed and cry 'I want my Mummy' all the time and I find myself
completely disconnecting and crying my heart out.

I hate feeling like I'm floating around in nowhere land. I often escape from myself and I can't reconnect again for a while. I don't want the flashbacks anymore.

 

[dharmaBum]

Disconnect- sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner.

Do you do desensitization exercises in EMDR? It's like a fast alternating bilateral stimulation while you simply focus on the most distressing feelings without trying to resolve anything. You do it for about 15-30 seconds, take a break, and then return to the original distress. You repeat this about 4 times, take a break, and then do another group of 4 repetitions. At the beginning you define the distress explicitly and rate your SUDS. Then after 1 or 2 groups of repetitions you rate your SUDS again, and repeat the process until you feel significant relief. You may get insights about the distress during this de-escalation exercise, but the idea is to only focus on repeated imaginal exposure until it diminishes, not to delve deep into the trauma like you would in a session with a practitioner.

I first used alternating audio tones w/headphones to create the bilateral stimulation, but now I do eye movement on my own. I sight out two things in my visual field that represent significant differences left-to-right, so that if I can see one, I can't see the other. Then I feel I'm getting a broad enough visual sweep to be engaging the visual bilateral stimulation.

Please talk with your EMDR practitioner about the appropriateness of trying such exercises at home. They should not increase your distress or heighten the range of triggering stimuli, but each person reacts differently to EMDR, especially depending on the length of their traumatic experiences.

I'm really going through issues similar to yours with EMDR. Although I was in EMDR for prolonged rape traumas and sexual abuse, I could talk about that. If I had to talk about what my childhood was like, even the most seemingly benign senses of being "misunderstood", I would fall apart. I kind of "black boxed" that era of trauma, but have been approaching it a bit more in EMDR recently- it is still evoking very difficult feelings between sessions, but the desensitization exercises help.

 

[disconnect]

Yeah, I've done that a lot. I've found it triggers the dissociation which has been a HUGE problem for me. I'll continue with trying to break past these barriers that are caused by the dissociation and see what happens. Thank you for your words, they mean more than I can explain. Thank you.
D/x

 

[Lucycat]

Hi

I too have been having EMDR for childhood sex abuse. I have found it very hard, but also very rewarding. The first few sessions I cried throughout, but we just carried on. I was so please with myself when I managed to get through a whole session with no tears, and then on the last one I was crying again!! I told my T. I keep a box of tissues with his name on it!

At the beginning I just could not go there back to the trauma. So it was more gentle with me thinking of it for just a few seconds at a time. I was told to imagine a line and go back along that line to the trauma and then quickly back to the present. I would then have the bilateral audio stimulation afterwards. We would repeat this numerous times each session sliding back and forward from trauma to present, then clicks. As time progressed the time I was able to spend with the trauma got longer and easier. The last time, without me noticing the change in technique, my T. did the clicks while I was 'in' the trauma. He said that I just could not have done that in the beginning. I did dissociate in the early days but always got 'dragged back' as my T. could see it happening. It is so hard to explain that to anyone who has not experienced it, so thank you for sharing your stories.

I have no more EMDR planned at the moment. I started it back in February and we think that, finally, all the episodes have been dealt with. He has warned me though that more things might crop up and I should not see it as a failure if I need more. There was only one event that we actually repeated the EMDR on three occasions before I could really let it go. Every other one has worked with one session.

There is no doubt that EMDR is not an easy option, but my T. was explaining to me how many hours of exposure therapy it takes to get to the same end result. For me getting better quickly was important and I was determined to go through the pain. I wish more people would write their positive outcomes of EMDR. I have read so much negative stuff about it. However I cannot go out and tell my pals how effective it is without going into the whole story .....

 

[disconnect]

Thank you for sharing your story with me :smile: I think it's amazing that you were able to keep persisting with EMDR and that you found it helped you, even though you found it distressing.

My T is away now for a week, so I won't see her until the second week in August. I guess half of me is welcoming the break of intensity and the other half is scared of being without her. It's silly, isn't it? I want her, but don't want her. Push and pull. I can't trust anyone and although I trust my T completely, deep down inside, I feel like I shouldn't, or that I'll lose her if I talk about things (in the past, everyone I've gotten close to has left me) and that leads to dissociation.

I find myself shutting down a lot more often in our sessions now and crying so hard that I can hardly breathe. This is one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do and it's very overwhelming to me. It's making all that anger, hurt and pain creep out from every part of me and it's draining to feel them so intensely every week.

I'm petrified of everyone and everything and I don't want that anymore.

 

[Lucycat]

Hi Again,

I guess your therapist is soon back from holiday. Mine is just going away - again! It will be 2 weeks before I see mine again.

I did have a further EMDR session since I last wrote. I was not expecting it, but something came up in discussion and he simply said,'well, let's work on that today'. And yet again it worked. I have not had to go back over that particular issue and it is weird to think back just a couple of weeks and see how intrusive the problem was.

Don't worry about the tears - just keep breathing:wink:
You do not need to think about being strong or what your T. is thinking. This is YOUR time, and your chance to work through all the crap. At the end you will be able to leave it all packaged away and only drag it out to think about IF YOU WANT TO!

Best Wishes

Lucy x

 

[Iam]

I have a question about EMDR. My T and I decided that it might be helpful for me to try EMDR. He is not certified in it so obviously I will have to go to someone else for this therapy. We decided that I will do it in conjunction with my therapy with him, meaning I will still continue to see him weekly as well.

My question is this. Has anybody here done EMDR with a different therapist while still working with their primary one? If so, how much detail do you have to go into about everything, not just the traumas? Did you do anything to prepare yourself for it?

Trust is a big issue for me, probably like everyone else here. My T said that in this case maybe I need to trust more in the technique than total trust in the relationship with the therapist.

The psychologist I've chosen is a female, which is also another factor. I have a harder time trusting women than men because of the emotional abuse I have suffered from my mother. Funny when you think about it because when reading my timeline it's been my father did this, my father did that. Anyway, he made an interesting comment about that. He said when a person choses one gender over another because of trust issues, that at some point when enough progress has been made in therapy the client should meet with a therapist of the gender that they are uncomfortable with. That it aides in the healing process.

So, I will be calling this therapist and setting up a session for sometime in October. I sure hope it's worth it as she is 1 1/2 hour drive from my home.

 

[Lucycat]

Hi Iam,

I only have the one T. for all, so I can't answer that. But I do know what EMDR is like. During EMDR sessions I did not have to go into detail with the T. I had to YHINK about the experience/trauma rather than verbalise it. That is much easier as I just did not have the words. I know understand my difficulty in saying it out loud is because I was too young when the trauma happened to have the words then...

What you DO need to describe to the T. is what is happeneing inside your body during EMDR. At first I just felt numb and just kept saying nothing is happening. But as we went on I DID feel changes, sometimes pretty subtle and sometimes more obvious. These don't have any apparant connection with the trauma, but the T will work that out for you.

My trauma was all from a male, and yet I am very comfortable with my male Therapist. I just feel that a trusting relationship with the T. is more important than everything else. Time has to be taken to gain this trust before any actual EMDR takes place. Also during this time we established the rules for feeling safe. I saw my T. for several weeks before he thought I was ready to start EMDR. I have had numerous sessions, and although there are no more planned at this stage, I would not rule it out if more memories surface. I still my T. every week or two.

I did not have any trust in the technique before I started. It sounded bonkers then and still does, but that does not bother me at all as I know from experience that it works. I trusted my T to give me the best treatment.

I hope the EMDR goes well for you. Do not worry about it. There really is nothing YOU can do to prepare for it, it is more of a matter of 'going with the flow'.

Regards
Lucy x