I Don't Feel Anything.

[Melp283]

I've been doing EMDR pretty heavily for about 3-4 months now and I've realized that most of the time I feel numb. Almost like all the emotions surrounding my therapy have been sealed off. This isn't new to me, it happens now and then during stress. It's like I start to look at everything from a detached perspective...a uninvolved third party.
This is a very useful safeguard for me during crunch time at work, but not so much during EMDR.

Has anyone had a similar experience? How did you get past it, or did you?

I'm worried that with this wall up I'm not getting as much out of EMDR as I can.

 

[FindingMyself88]

First off, you've been doing EMDR majority of the sessions for 3-4 months? That is enough to wear anyone out! My T and I sit down and pick a target memory that is causing me the most issues/PTSD symtoms. We do EMDR normally for about 4-5 sessions (twice a week, so 2 weeks) and then stop for at LEAST a month or more before moving on to a new target. I am very exhausted afterwards, but not necessarily numb. But then again emotions are not something I willingly allow myself to feel anyways and EMDR is actually helping me with that. I would say take a break on EMDR for a little bit and maybe try again?? I know I couldn't do it continuously every session!

 

[Writingthruthepain]

I have a very scary feeling of being distant sometimes - like I am over there and not in my body - sounds similar. I only notice it when I talk so I have now became terrified of talking - which obviously is problematic. It comes and goes - I wish I knew when it would come...... It started before I started emdr though. I understand what you are saying. I wish I wasn't so terrified by it. How are you not terrified by it?

As for feeling numb I actually had some things happen in my life today that were kinda positive and I felt numb - and it was better than the horrible way I usually feel so I welcomed that. I'm new to this forum. This is my first post. I won't take my medicine - I don't know why. I mean I do sometimes but it makes me feel foggy and I can't really work on it - I'm a freelance writer and my writing is not as sharp - I just feel really slow on it. So I'm struggling with that. So happy to have everyone here to write to :/

 

[FindingMyself88]

I have a very scary feeling of being distant sometimes

Sounds like it might be dissociation you are experiencing. Thats how I feel when I dissociate.

 

[Powder]

@Melp283 do you do EMDR every session or just 1/3 or how much?

EMDR is considered a "somatic" therapeutic approach due to the use of the body to aid in mind-body healing. I have 0 experience with it, as I was getting ready to do this, and lost a considerable source of income that derailed the plan. :/

I've read frequently as was told that it is vital, very important to fully charge up "positive resources" prior to even doing EMDR. Like filing the emotional bank up before spending, otherwise you could end up in the emotional red.

What you describe sounds like the "observer" I've read about in dissociation theory. But it could also just be called "flat affect" in which one feels numb, just like you said. Some clinicians seem to relate Flat Affect to a Mild/Mid-range Depression or Malaise.

Some would talk about Structural Dissociation, and relate this to the emergence of your observer, which is related to the Freeze response to the traumas brought out in the EMDR sessions. The nervous system says "trauma! Freeze!" and it's not shutting off.

The therapist needs to allow you to come out of Freeze/Acute Observation mode and calm back down to a less triggered state before moving on with more EMDR. Doing EMDR with only positive memories and using the ability to connect to others in ways that bring comfort is most important to calm out of Freeze.

You may be shallow breathing. Exercise and deep breathing may help, aromatherapy, and stretching or yoga alone until you feel deeply calm and centered out of this state may help you.

I hope you find a way out of this state. Not good to accept it but progress may be underway under this feeling.

Hugs, Muse

 

[Melp283]

Thank you all for the input.

Writing- that out of body experience sounds like dissociation. I've had that occur in a session as well (which stopped the session right there) and yes it terrified me.

Finding- I do EMDR once a week for now. My T suggested weekly for a while to work through some complex memories. I've been told I can say no to a session if I don't feel up to it.
You are right, it is mentally exhausting running through memories, but I feel like I'm doing a little better with certain triggers at work.

Muse- I'm told I have have a very bad freeze response (which resulted in me being raped at 16 by my older cousin). I feel panicked and it's like the control of my body has left me and I can't move. Like I'm aware, but my body is in a comatose state that seems to last forever.
I spend a lot of time trying to plan and control everything so that this state never occurs again. Part of therapy for me is trying to let that go.

And yet, as I type this I feel nothing. Are the emotions that are supposed to be there behind a wall or are they just not there at all?
It's like I see a box with feelings in it, I can pick it all apart and examine it methodically, and put it back down like it belongs to someone else. But I look in my box and there is nothing there...

 

[Seasounds]

EMDR caused me to freeze, be numb, and extraordinary depressed.

Therapies where I get better include those therapies that involve a gentle approach, where I feel safe enough to relax, feel, move and speak in an inauthentic response.

'Permissive' hypnotherapy (you can talk conversationally, and it is focuses on your goals) was a great ice breaker; it relaxed me enough to let down my protective freeze layer just enough so I could talk, express feelings, and integrate new core thoughts. Other expressive therapies followed, and continue to help.

Good luck finding what you want!

 

[Friday]

I don't know if any of this will be useful to you... None* of it is EMDR related, but it's my experiences with losing my emotions. Which is slightly different from going cold-hard. I can go cold-hard just by thinking of it, usually. Losing my emotions, on the other hand? That one is more complicated. Like you said... I can see where they should be, analytically. But they simply aren't there. Vexing. Well, if I'm sans emotions, mildly concerning would be more apt a description.

***

I've spent years trying to hang onto my emotions with the skin of my teeth... Because the first time I lost them, it took years to get them back. And then, it was mostly anger. Not fun. Every emotion was rage. Kept popping me back up into an emotion-free-zone, because I couldn't handle the anger back then. Took me a long time to learn how to control my anger enough to drop down past rage into other feelings. To learn how to ride that wave to shore, where the rest of them were.

Since then, I misplace them from time to time. A few weeks here, a few months there. It's... Blissful. Life is so much easier without emotions. Without pain. Without fear. Without remorse.

Which scared the hell out of me the first time I lost them again, recently. I know where I go when I don't have remorse holding me back. Curiously... I found that this time I didn't need the threat of guilt and remorse. My morals were not an emotional choice, but an imperative decision. Removing my emotions actually made it easier for me to follow my moral compass. It became a logical problem. Again, relief.

But I didn't know that, going into it. So I fought like hell this fall not to lose them when I felt them first slipping away.

I had a huge stressor (including some actual triggers) coming this past winter, and this past fall I was an utter disaster leading up to it. My emotions started slipping. But I was winning. I was keeping them close, every last tattered remnant I could hang onto, if not very well in check. ((It's weird describing this. Hope it makes any kind of sense.)) Until one particularly bad nightmare.

Usually, my nightmares don't have the emotions I felt then tied up in them. They have present-day emotions. In no small part, because for most of my nightmares I was either cold-hard, or emotion-free. It's kind of like, I'm feeling what I "should" have back then. But now. In spades.

Not this nightmare. I relived a memory that's never really bothered me even though it's a really bad one, because I didn't have emotions at the time. And I didn't have emotions in my nightmare. When I woke up? I woke up as free of emotions as I had been in my dream.

* Now... Like I said... I've never done EMDR. But I have to wonder. You said you lose your emotions under stress? Any chance in reliving a memory in therapy you did what I did in my dream? Came back in the same emotional state you were when you were in it?

 

[Melp283]

"Any chance in reliving a memory in therapy you did what I did in my dream? Came back in the same emotional state you were when you were in it?"
-Friday

That's a very real possibility that I had not thought of! I was sexually assaulted almost daily from 7 to 8 yo. The only way I could handle what was being done to me was to "disappear" in a way, become the observer as Muse mentioned. I felt no emotion then, and I spent my time trying to figure out why he was doing what he was doing, when he was doing it.

I will have to talk this over with my T, thank you! :)

 

[Frogs88]

I have had an issue with EMDR when things just stopped working. I talked to my T about it and she changed the speeds and directions of how she moved her fingers. My reaction and the memories that I got with that were do intense that I said 'no' it's too much'. The next week I asked her to try what she was doing again now that I was more ready for it. I had the worst session ever, I definitely was no longer feeling numb. Yet three days on I felt so much better than I had done not just in months but that self esteem and confidence I lost years ago was starting to come back.

Yeah, basically I think you need to talk to your T and ask him/her to try something new.