Not sure if this goes here but I have a chance to have EMDR, by someone who has been doing this for many years free of charge. I have lots of traumas and this past few months they have all came back out flooding me. I'm far more equipped to deal with them this time around as opposed to any other time in life. Has anyone here had EMdR and how was it? Conventional talk therapy hasn't done me much so this is the next step.

Hi Sailor. I had to Google EMDR so I have no idea if that type of therapy is effective. All I can say is best wishes and you know you have people here that support you. (((hugs)))

Quote from: SailorMars1994 on May 01, 2018, 06:20:22 PM
Not sure if this goes here but I have a chance to have EMDR, by someone who has been doing this for many years free of charge. I have lots of traumas and this past few months they have all came back out flooding me. I'm far more equipped to deal with them this time around as opposed to any other time in life. Has anyone here had EMdR and how was it? Conventional talk therapy hasn't done me much so this is the next step.

At the VA, after mindfulness, cbt, and dbt, they felt I had enough tools to start working on issues and being able to deal with the consequences. I found it very effective in helping me deal with some of the causes of ptsd.

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Hi hon.

I've first hand experience of EMDR, whether it's good or bad is hard to tell.

At the time, I thought it would help with a specific set of traumatic events that I need to deal with, and having seen the amazing results with others, thought it would help. However, what I didn't know was that I had cPTSD, and that EMDR can be contra-indicated in the treatment of trauma for those with cPTSD, because of a phenomenon called emotional flooding. EMDR gets processing blockages moving for memories, but, once that blockage is removed, the backlog is then processed one after the other, in an unmerciful, unrelenting stream that can be as traumatising, or more traumatising than the actual events themselves - the flood. Of course this can be triggering, and overwhelming unless you have the appropriate tools in your mental judo kit to be able to deal with it all at once.

So, inadvertently through trying to help myself, I've probably made things ten times worse.

So, what to do? Talk it through with your therapist first, explain that you have the opportunity for some free treatment, and get thier opinion on whether they believe it would be of benefit. The desire to remove the sting from the trauma is understandable.

(Hugs)

Rowan