Hi Polly - I've been doing EMDR on and off since around 2017. I had about 6 months of consistent therapy that incorporated EMDR in 2017, and found that it seemed to cut through all the rationalizations/conscious attempts to work through things - straight to the heart of things. It made associations between past and present effortless, and just got the meaningless mess of layers that cover the trauma out of the way. Fascinating and weird and I always felt so relieved afterward.
After 2017 I experienced a few consecutive "big T" traumas (that resulted from not taking enough time to heal what I was working on in EMDR at the time due to moving). I'm now back in therapy and doing EMDR, and am finding it similarly helpful in cutting through the bs and getting to the heart of things. The time around, I've had nightmares and some flashbacks as a result of the EMDR, which can last a few days.
But the nightmares and flashbacks always give good information - the dreams are highly symbolic, and the flashbacks help me to increasingly recognize what trauma related dissociation into a child-like state looks like.
I am learning to catch the dissociation faster and use methods to brings myself back to the present. DBT skills help me a ton with this. There's a great podcast called "The Skillful Podcast" that teaches DBT skills.
So I love EMDR! It accelerates things in my experience, but my therapist approached it with caution, ensuring that I had skills in place to self-soothe, because it can put you in touch with your trauma and what needs resolution faster than talk therapy, and that of course leads to big feelings sometimes.
Oh - and I also started EMDR after reading The Body Keeps the Score. I started doing a ton of yoga (the slow kind, either yin or restorative or another parasympathetic evoking type) as a result of that book. The combination saved my sanity, I truly believe, and got me through medical school, which I believe I would have had to drop out of minus that book and those two modalities.
I do EMDR virtually using handheld tappers (the bilateral right to left vibration of these handheld egg sized devices supposedly mimics the bilateral brain stimulation evoked by eye movements I think). I have to echo what Armee said above about finding a therapist trained in multiple modalities. Mine has incorporated IFS as well.
After 2017 I experienced a few consecutive "big T" traumas (that resulted from not taking enough time to heal what I was working on in EMDR at the time due to moving). I'm now back in therapy and doing EMDR, and am finding it similarly helpful in cutting through the bs and getting to the heart of things. The time around, I've had nightmares and some flashbacks as a result of the EMDR, which can last a few days.
But the nightmares and flashbacks always give good information - the dreams are highly symbolic, and the flashbacks help me to increasingly recognize what trauma related dissociation into a child-like state looks like.
I am learning to catch the dissociation faster and use methods to brings myself back to the present. DBT skills help me a ton with this. There's a great podcast called "The Skillful Podcast" that teaches DBT skills.
So I love EMDR! It accelerates things in my experience, but my therapist approached it with caution, ensuring that I had skills in place to self-soothe, because it can put you in touch with your trauma and what needs resolution faster than talk therapy, and that of course leads to big feelings sometimes.
Oh - and I also started EMDR after reading The Body Keeps the Score. I started doing a ton of yoga (the slow kind, either yin or restorative or another parasympathetic evoking type) as a result of that book. The combination saved my sanity, I truly believe, and got me through medical school, which I believe I would have had to drop out of minus that book and those two modalities.
I do EMDR virtually using handheld tappers (the bilateral right to left vibration of these handheld egg sized devices supposedly mimics the bilateral brain stimulation evoked by eye movements I think). I have to echo what Armee said above about finding a therapist trained in multiple modalities. Mine has incorporated IFS as well.