How Do You Know If Flashbacks During Emdr Are From Real Events?

[HelenB]

I neither believe nor doubt the veracity of what I experienced in EMDR. I don't know what to make of it. I certainly don't want to give it credibility if it didn't happen because then I would have a horrible memory of an uncle. He's dead now. But I feel like I'd be his judge and jury, convicting him, without a shred of evidence other than what I experienced in EMDR.

I would agree with others on here that trusting your gut is the only way. For myself I also find I helpful to remember that you are not convicting him at all or bringing him before a court, you are exploring the emotions and feelings which you have inside you. This is a private thing between you and your therapist and anyone else you are safe enough and wanting to share it with as you process it and I really believe that it is only by allowing those and feelings to come into the light will you ever be able to work through the emotions because the thoughts and feelings are real even if you are unsure of the exact event which triggered those emotions.

I really do not believe you would have experienced this in therapy for no reason and even if it is not a direct memory of things which happened to you I believe the part of you which was allowed to come up in those times does have a story to tell and that an important part of healing is learning to listen to all the different parts of yourself without judgement on yourself or anyone else, and from that open place believe that you will come to a place of being able to work through and process all of the emotions, which there is no doubt about being real, and hope you are able to do this in this time.

I do know for myself I do still find it very hard. In so many ways I do not want to believe the massive story in my head, but the more I feed in that whatever I rationally want to believe I am not going to shut out that hurting part inside me, the more healing I know I have found, even when the pain of facing all the emotions is so hard, because as I know I have said on here before the most damage now is the ongoing damage I have always done to myself by shutting it all out and hating myself for even feeling at all, and though I still cannot say I know exactly what did happen when I was that little girl, I know that there are parts still hurting and that they do deserve to be listened to and that learning to embrace as accept every part of myself is the only way to heal.

God bless
Helen

 

[Abstract]

I realise what you have written in this thread may have opened up a good few wounds and hope you are doing OK and can work on bringing yourself back to the present emotionally.

 

[macca]

AL - I mentioned earlier on that I too was having concerns over whether my experience in EMDR may have reflected a real memory or not, and that I would post here when I'd heard what my T had to say about it.

Well - I saw her today. She said that the emotions are real - however there is no way of verifying whether an experience that comes up in EMDR is real, and that processing it anyway is beneficial. She told me that nightmares can feel real and be terrifying, without being real - and that there just isn't a way of being sure. However - she pointed out that the things that trigger us are related to implicit memories, that is, memories of fear-inducing stimuli are recorded often without awareness as that is how the survival system works. So, for example, someone that fell from a balcony as a young child, who has no memory of the incident, will still likely be scared of heights.

Though she stated that what has come up for me during and after my first EMDR cannot be verified as real or not, she believed that for me it appears likely that something did happen to me, due to scraps of memories that I did have, my flashbacks and triggers, along with other corroborating evidence, rather than what has come up in the EMDR itself.

I realise that this hasn't really given you any answers at all, only what we already knew - that there just isn't any way to actually verify an EMDR experience as reality or not. However, I wonder if there is any way for you to try and piece anything together outside of EMDR? Like - were you ever uncomfortable around your uncle when he was alive? Perhaps he was representative of someone else in some way? I dreamt I was raped by my father, I know it's not the same as EMDR, or what has happened for you - but it was possibly a mix of a real rape, and my father being consciously known to me as a source of abuse (emotional abuse). I'm confident that my father did no such thing - things indicate that someone came through my bedroom window, and I do not react to him except in relation to interpersonal stuff.

I wish I could give you a better answer, as I can see this is very disturbing for you. I hope you are ok.

 

[Abstract]

One of the hard things for me is the possibility of doing someone a grave injustice by thinking they are involved if they aren't.