Experiences with EMDR?

[bignik]

my nephew had it and also said it was of great help to him following a bad road traffic accident he was involved in , Im currently having CBT at the moment only had 3 sessions but as said at the start it would be a gradual process so I have to remain optimistic.

[swgrl09]

Thanks for the replies, sickandtired you definitely have to be ready and if you are not ready for it, that is perfectly ok. I would not suggest doing it if you do not feel you are at that point yet. Maybe just talking to a therapist in general, not going into the EMDR, would help? Or a support group if there are any local ones?

[sickandtired]

yeah....i rung my therapist left a message and asked to try cbt instead...
just the thought of emdr made me cry all last night

[chalk]

I have been diagnosed with PTSD following some incidents at work where I was attacked by a mob of teenagers. I have had 5 EMDR sessions (now after 7 sessions of CBTwith a different Psychologist, a visit to the Psychiatrist who transferred me to EMDR) I have covered the safe place and how to visualise it and have moved onto looking at the events that happened. The last session I had was truly awful, it was like a form of torture. Normally with a panic attack I breathe rapid and shallow, with this I found my throat closed up, I could hardly breathe or swallow and I felt really badly that I was going to throw up. It was a case of one burp after another. My chest is often tight around the centre (sternum) but oddly it was the sides that went really tight this time. My legs were bouncing like crazy! I could visualise what happened in the one incident really clearly, I knew I was in the therapists room but it was like I wasn't, then all of a sudden I went back 36 years to a time at school where I was given the bumps on my birthday and hurled into a load of bushes.
The therapist who is a really nice lady and level 2 trained told me that it often gets worse before it gets better. I already sleepwalk, shout out in my sleep and occasionally defecate as well. Sorry for the graphic description. I have barely slept at all since my last EMDR session, and I know the tiredness feeds the condition, I close my eyes and the childhood memory keeps entering my mind, if I sleep the nightmares are awful. Does everyone get this for a while? The psychologist phoned me up a couple of hours after the session because she was concerned about me and she spoke to the Psychiatrist, now they want to try me on an antipsychotic medicine called Quetiapine. Does anyone here have any experience of EMDR having this effect? do I stick with it? does it get better with more sessions.... or will this tip me over the edge? Any experience of Quetiapine? Sorry this has been such a rambling response, my minsd is all over the place.

[sickandtired]

think very carefully about what has already helped you and wether you are ready for the EMDR...?
I,d been doing well,then I went for my second appt with the phsycologist.....I,d been feeling low anyway and she seemed to bombard me with these new techniques etc ,I heard the word EMDR and suddenly imagined how I would be sat in a chair,going through the old painful memories again.....I felt sick
next thing I knew,I,d agreed to skip cbt and go straight to EMDR....she gave me a 'panic' booklet and some activity goals etc and I left feeling bewildered....
I spent the rest of the day crying and then my hubby came home and asked what was wrong with me....I answered,"I dont know" then fell into fits of sobbing.....
I really felt like Id taken a big step back in my recovery.......just the thought of EMDR had my mind in turmoil....that was enough for me to decide,I was not ready!
As soon as I rang the MH centre and told her I just wanted to do the cbt......I felt a weight lift and my mood completely changed.She said she was going to ring me anyway as she felt that I,d been overwhelmed with all the info.....she must have got vibes that I was scared.
That said,everyone is different and I too have heard it makes you feel much worse before you get any better,but Im just not ready to risk that yet,even though the waiting list means it would be months......dont even think I,d be ready then....maybe never.I want to deal with my panic attacks and obsessive thoughts,but I dont want to delve into my past,its far too painful.
hope you come to the right decision for you

[chalk]

Thanks for your reply, I thought I was ready, the psychologist explained all the theory and like everyone these days I had googled EMDR and its positives and negatives. I suppose I thought what had I got to lose, I could hardly get any worse could I????? I honestly had forgotten about the incident at school when I was 13.... after all 36 years is a long time, but its just like it happened yesterday now. I feel like I have even more to deal with than I had before..... I worry what other things might be dredged up from my mind that have been long forgotten. The mind.... well mine sure is a weird thing. Do not let my experiences put you off though, some people on other websites reckon its the best thing since sliced bread.

[swgrl09]

My therapist explained to me that experiences such as you have had can happen, and that supposedly whatever happens during the sessions and even after is what your brain needs to process what it hasn't processed. So according to her, I would say that your brain is doing what it needs to. My therapist also told me that I could have a lot of crazy dreams, nightmares, be exhausted, and that my brain could still be processing outside of the session all week. I don't know if that helps at all.

For me, I had my second session yesterday and it was definitely harder than the first. I feel very jittery and anxious today, but a lot of stuff came up in the session that I did not expect would so fast.

I would say if it is too difficult for you, don't push yourself. So far I know I am processing things that I have not and that have been pushed back in my mind for a looong time - for good reason, but are making me crazy now, so I am going to stick with it and see how it goes.

Good luck, keep us posted.

[swgrl09]

I am wondering from anybody who has had EMDR before if what I am experiencing could be a result of getting further into it. As I said, my second session was this past Monday. I am finding this week that I am very anxious and paranoid. I am noticing odd things that normal people would not think twice of and getting anxious about it. I am paranoid that my boyfriend is cheating on me, even though he is not. But I keep finding "signs" that he is (that aren't really signs at all.)

I guess some background might help. I am having EMDR for two traumas I have gone through in the past year. I don't want to get into the details of everything, but first I watched my mom day very quickly in a very painful way. It was a shock. Then a few months later my sister's husband broke into my apartment and did some awful things to me that I don't want to get into the details of here. The details aren't important for this purpose. She is still with him and making excuses for him.

Anyway my symptoms primarily have been a combination of being related to both traumatic experiences. We worked on the "mom" trauma first and are just slowly moving through it until I get to the brother-in-law trauma. I think my paranoia and inability to trust are due to the brother-in-law thing as well as fear of loss because of my mom. But I was not this paranoid before. Could the paranoia be coming out because I am processing some of the other problems that were overshadowing it? I think my grief has been overwhelming and much "louder" in my head than dealing with the BIL issue. I haven't really let myself deal with the BIL issue yet.

I guess what I am asking in a VERY long winded way is if this sounds like it is part of me processing through EMDR and if I keep working through it, will it get better? I will bring it up at my next session with my therapist.

[chalk]

I had another EMDR session today, this is the second one where the Psychologist has taken me back.... if that is the right description to what happened. I remembered lots of things, actually more than what I wrote down at the time. The question I asked the Psychologist was.. are the things I am remembering, things that happened to me or is it that I am remembering some of the vivid dreams and nightmares that I have had since? I feel that I do not know the difference between the reality and the dreams/nightmares. Sounds mad I know!!!
It has been explained to me that the brain will blank things off at the time as a self protection mechanism, some of what happened will not be remembered until either a dream state or EMDR uncovers the memory. The memory can then be processed.
This session was weird, in the middle of remembering the incidents at work, I remembered an incident when I was 5 years old this time, something I had long forgotten, but now i have remembered it, I can remember it happening.... if that makes any sense???

[swgrl09]

Chalk - I have had some odd experiences like that too. In the middle of thinking about the traumatic events, my brain will jump to some other point in my life, ya know? Something that I would not have thought about at all otherwise and would not have even remembered. My therapist says that your brain will go where it needs to go, and if it doesn't make sense why that is ok, but it is just what your brain needs right now.