Things that before EMDR therapy I would have coped with I can't seem to now. Yesterday my teen rushed ahead and had a shower despite me saying 'I'm going for one right now, knowing full well. I lost the plot, I was shaking crying and hyperventilating. WTH is wrong with me?. I wake up in the night my mind thinks of worst case senarios to my current relationship and I start crying and I'm consumed by grief thinking he'll leave me eventually .True he's not treating me well but I cant find any anger anymore for anything. No rage when I should feel it. Just tears and ' punched in the gut feeling' . Its like my flame got snuffed out. I used to be able to handle situations well and stand up and not take people s*** but now I feel I lost ' myself'. I started EMDR for flashbacks during Covid lockdown. I thought I was doing the right thing getting help.Anuone else feel like this?.
Emotional dysregulation more easily triggered , 9 months of EMDR in
- Thread starter lisa67
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arfie
MyPTSD Pro
in my strictly personal herstory, "awareness" is WTH was wrong with me during my most reactionary phases of recovery. during that early recovery, the conscious awareness of things which i had shrugged off and/or repressed for decades threw me for multiple proverbial loops. little things like adolescent disrespect suddenly felt like charging rhinoceros herds. the new and heightened sensitivity felt excruciating.
decades later, a new awareness can still bring on heightened sensitivity but the good news is that i have grown more aware there, as well. being aware of the heightened sensitivity helps me process without losing my perspective in the here and now.
Freddyt
Sponsor
Quite frankly, I was alot the same when I came here!!!
So here's the deal. You still have PTSD, when you do EMDR work it starts a thing called reprocessing. It doesn't change your memories, just how you feel about those memories. Think of your brain like a card index of your memories, EMDR reprocessing goes through that card by card, and changes how you feel about that memory, sometimes it sails along, sometimes it edits card after card and needs more processing power to do its thing. So that task gets added to all the other things your brain is doing. So when your brain is busy and working hard? You have less resources for other things, and you hit the top of the anxiety scale pretty easily, so crying, or some other reaction to stress.
One thing that helped tons was The PTSD Cup article. Realizing all stress is stress was just new to me. Then learning how to mitigate for me. How to stop and reduce stress. How to tell how full the cup is. How to live within the resources I have everyday.
Not easy but do able. There were lots of days over the line but once I got a handle on it then I learned not only where the line was but there were ways to step over it, and the results, and how to plan to deal with those results. It's not easy and it takes time and effort to master but I will tell you - this is a community that will share and help you get there.
As for waking in the middle of the night, if you can't get back to sleep - find something for your brain to do, I read or watch old TV shows I know all the dialog to or do something to break the rumination (the worst case scenario thing) cycle. Search here there are a hundred threads about how to stop rumination....
Oh and Welcome @lisa67 !
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Friday
Moderator
That’s trauma therapy… EVERYTHING gets worse…. Before it gets better.
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