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Emdr/therapy: impatient, what is wrong with me?

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I have been doing emdr trauma work off and on for awhile now. There have been some pauses due to life stressors needing attention or the occasional freak out about whether I can trust my T. Last night I decided to watch a bunch of YouTube on EMDR. Some were of individuals talking about their recovery work, others were experts explaining it. What I noticed was that people were solving traumas in 2-3 appointments. Experts were saying that combat and rape victims were done in 6 weeks. I am now feeling like a failure.:bag: My traumas terrify me to the point that we have to ground right after choosing a topic. She is having me do a childhood thing due to the block in the rape, and now the childhood flashback has certainly taken over my week and it has been awful to relive over and over again. Just trying to survive.

Back to emdr, what is wrong with me? How are these youtube people so comfortable with their traumas? How is it that the ptsd person was so quick to recover? Anyone on here done in a few sessions?
 
Because no one replied to my thread, I have an update... at least it won’t say “replies, 0” anymore, lol.

Talked to my T about the emdr videos, she said it is taking longer because my things are a bit more “complex.” Not sure if she was handing me a new label or just saying that two big T’s and a bunch of small t’s takes longer. Whichever it is, I’m becoming more patient.
 
I didn't see the post or would have replied Tex. I suck at emdr. It sends me in to a panic the next day. I am sorry you are going through this. I don't have any advice other than to stick with it. Hang in there!
 
Isn't it a bit like unravelling tangled balls of wool? If you only have one then it is easier, but when your workbag contains several different wools all tangled together you find that working on one pulls out bits of the others.So for me.working on one trauma pulls out others that are linked, as well as all the old childhood beliefs
 
There is nothing wrong with you.....or if there is I am in the boat with you. I have done EMDR on/off for years....it has really helped in something and not in others...definitely did not "fix" it all, somethings still to difficult to tackle. I just can't watch things like that on Youtube or elsewhere...all they accomplish for me is to feel horrible about myself. Try to be gentle with yourself.
 
I've been doing it once a week for over a year and she estimates I have another year to go. When I asked about the "everyone else gets it done in 8 - 12 sessions" she said that timeline doesn't apply to multiple traumas. It's not unusual to have to go for many many months or years - especially if you take life breaks in between.

And yea - untangling is what slows me down the most. Have to deal with the memory, get it processed, figure out where it goes in the bigger picture, then figure out what comes next. There are alot of times I can't process more than 5 -10 minutes of the original trauma so it takes a crap ton of time.
 
I have been doing emdr trauma work off and on for awhile now. There have been some pauses due to life s...

You are not a failure. I felt exactly like you before, because I was also told that in a couple of weeks, I would be healed, but... Hell no !

EMDR seems to work well to treat 1 trauma (i.e. an adult person - call them patient X - with no previous trauma has a sudden car accident. A few weeks after they are out of the hospital, they freeze as soon as they sit on the driver seat, reliving their accident with intrusive flashbacks and maybe making a panic attack at the prospect of turning the engine on). EMDR seems to be adapted for helping patient X to overcome the stress of driving after the recent accident they had.

When a person - called patient Y - has suffered from a series of trauma that lasted sometimes for years (i.e. child abuse by the parents until 18), EMDR seems ineffective because it is not an individual and isolated wound that fractured one's ordered life, but for patient Y, it is their whole childhood, years and years of abusing relationships, entanglement due to mental conditioning of a relative who brainwashed them into accepting toxic behavioural patters... Patient Y's situation is complex and demands a long deep work that will take ages.

It took me 8 months of EMDR and in spite of some progress, it didn't solve most of the issues. Now, I am trying the Lifespan Integration Therapy (LIT), and it took me 6 months to clear the trauma of the rapes I was victim of when I was a teenager. As for all the other trauma, I am definitely not out of the woods........

So, please, don't feel bad. I don't know your story, but I am confident that a LOT of people are in our situations. Many videos are rubbish; so many people do struggle in fact.
 
Yeah. I think my original assumption was that I only had 1 big trauma, a college rape. I guess I didn’t realize other traumas were traumas and the thing I blocked from my childhood decided to come out as well. So this stuff is a bit more involved.
 
Sexual assault traumas can be really difficult to deal with, and years worth of traumas can really make a mark, which will take a lot to undo.
I'm in EMDR therapy. Right now it's more like EMD therapy, because I need to desensitize more before we progress. We are kind of strengthening my tool box as well. I have advanced some, but it has taken quite some time. I started seeing my therapist about 10 weeks ago, though we didn't start trying EMDR until I stabilized more.
 
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