Repressed or false memories coming up in dreams?

[OakTree123]

Hi everyone,

I just had my first EMDR session a couple weeks ago. Ever since, I have been having dreams about my abuser and they all have the same theme to them...it's something that I don't know if it really happened to me or not. I was just wondering if anyone has ever had kind of "false" memories popping up in nightmares after EMDR sessions? I mean, I dream about things that didn't happen all the time, but I know for certain that it's just something my brain made up. What's strange to me is that the same theme keeps popping up over and over again and I wake up in a lot of distress...I feel uncertain if what I'm dreaming about has actually happened or not. It's not the same dream over and over again, but it's more like a suggestion of something.

Has anyone ever experienced repressed memories coming up in dreams? I repressed a lot of things when I was being abused and sometimes I remember things that happened out of the blue...but I've never remembered something after having a dream about it, which makes me think that maybe it's just my brain crafting a kind of made up memory? I was just curious about other peoples experiences.

 

[Sues]

Yep, I've had that happen. I'll wake up and think of something too. EMDR really brings stuff to the surface. This doesn't mean this is real or not. Give yourself some time and be open to it. You are working on intense memories in a different way that your brain is not used to. I was exhausted after my first EMDR session. I still am each time, especially now that we are getting into the really bad memories. My therapist tells me that I'm doing a lot of work in the session and to take extra care of myself throughout the week afterwards to recover.

 

[Wendell_R]

I have images that come up after I wake. Sometimes they are so violent that I know for a fact that they are not true as a physical reality. The way I look at it is that these images & memories have an emotional truth to them--they represent how whatever happened long ago has been packed away inside my brain. Sometimes, I think of EMDR as processing my memories, rather than EMDR processing what actually happened to me.

 

[DharmaGirl]

Yes, I used to have nightmares and that's how my trauma would come up.