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Terrible GERD during and after EMDR intensive

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EmaCrt

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Hi everyone. So back in the end of July I did a 5 day emdr intensive. 30 hours in 5 days. Was a lot and don’t know if I would do that ever again. It did help emotionally with a number of issues and I notice it in my interactions with a couple of toxic family members and there is no emotion where it used to set me off for days. In that way it was a success.

That noted, during the intensive my laropharangeal reflux (a type of gerd with main symptoms being chronic throat clearing, post nasal drip, cough) was the worst it’s ever been and since then has been terrible the past two months. I can hardly fall asleep some nights bc I have to clear my throat for hours. My diet and exercise are both very healthy and weren’t any different before, during, or after.

Has anything like this happened to anyone? Onset or worsening of physical symptoms with emdr that didn’t go away after? I am not sure what is going on but 100% certain it’s related!

I was originally planning to start weekly therapy in September with an emdr provider but honestly I’m uncertain that’s the way to go at all. I’m terrified to ever do emdr again.

Anyone have experience similar and then healed physically? If so, how / what did you do.

Thanks!
 
Absolutely there can be somatic symptoms following a round of EMDR. I often get headaches. Several times I have felt extremely nauseous.

Remember, just because they're the result of EMDR doesn't make them different than any other physical symptoms. I took aspirin for the headache and Pepto for the stomachache and I was fine.
 
Absolutely there can be somatic symptoms following a round of EMDR. I often get headaches. Several times I have felt extremely nauseous.

Remember, just because they're the result of EMDR doesn't make them different than any other physical symptoms. I took aspirin for the headache and Pepto for the stomachache and I was fine.
Thanks. Yeah I’ve done everything I can possibly to and it’s not going away.
 
Actually this is very similar to me. The last memory we decide to process triggered a lot more than before emdr session. After discussed with my therapist, we add one additional session for grounding techniques. It's really hard to say, like a blind box. The previous sessions worked very well on me and I do feel much better but this time just didn't work and even worse.

Maybe just a random number for every session.

Hope you all the best!
 
The easiest way to visualize what is going on in your head with EMDR is to think of your memories as cards in a giant card file.

What EMDR does, is go through them rewriting how you feel about those memories on each card that has trauma and a feeling attached to it.

So, that goes on until all the jobs you gave your brain to do finish. How intense it is depends on a lot of different things but similar to your computer - when its running a huge data intensive program - everything else slows down and you computer won't respond very well.

Your brain is the computer - EMDR reprocessing is the program. Lots of physical stuff happens because your head is stressed. I had hives for months when we started EMDR for trauma. Same thing just a different reaction....
 
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