EMDR

[Polly]

I am wondering about peoples experiences with EMDR, regardless of diagnosis. I am intrigued about this treatment pathway after reading "the body keeps the score". Unfortunately there are no practitioners in my area that offer the service, has anyone had any experience doing EMDR on them selfs? Or even professionally and what was your experience please

[natureluvr]

I had 8 EMDR sessions about 6 or 7 years ago.  I held something in each hand, and it would buzz gently in my hand alternating between hands.  What it did for me, is it seemed to give me greater access to my grief and tears about some of the abusive incidents that I experienced in childhood.  I was able to share those with the therapist, and cry at the same time.  In the past in therapy, I had only shared the facts of the abuse, but without the accompanying emotions.  This was very helpful and therapeutic. 

[Armee]

Hi Polly.

I've been with the same therapist for more than 4 years (first and only T). I'm almost 45. T was primarily trained in cognitive behavioral therapy and not complex trauma. We were really hitting dead-ends with the cognitive approaches though. I asked him to please get EMDR training and he eventually did. So we've been doing EMDR for a little over a year now.

T has seen it really really work for several of his clients, including ones with severe and complex trauma.

I've found it to be much more effective for me than cognitive work and straight up exposure therapy. But really for me and I think many with complex trauma no single tool is the answer it has to be a lot of different things. Some EMDR practioners seem to be very textbook and methodical and rigid and I don't think that is the right approach honestly. I would look for someone who does EMDR along with several other approaches.

My experience with it has been far from textbook likely due to dissociation plus a factor that is fairly unique to me, which is that I do not have access to visual and other sensory memories. Just spatial and physical sensations and some emotions and thoughts. It took several months for me to simply be able to follow the finger movements with my eyes, and with my limitations processing has been glacial. But it is working and it is bringing pieces together and helping me understand and process things that before we're out of reach. One thing that has been helpful is to have started with relatively straightforward things to see how it works before moving on to the difficult things. I'm happy to answer questions but it's hard for me to talk about it in a general manner because I am so far from textbook when it comes to EMDR.

[dollyvee]

Hi Polly,

I've done EMDR with my current therapist off and on for about six years. It seems to help give more space to help processing the stuff that comes up, like it's not so overwhelming anymore.

I did some EMDR over zoom during the lockdown and it seemed to work. So, you might be able to find someone remotely if that's an option. There's a good episode of Therapist Uncensored with Laurel Parnell on attachment focused EMDR and she kind of goes into what to look for in a good EMDR practitioner if that's any help. I just listened to it, so it's fresh on my mind.

Sending you support,
dolly

[NICOLE]

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. 

[Kizzie]

Hi Polly - I didn't have a good first experience with EMDR but that was because my T was not especially well trained in it.  My second experience went quite well and since then I've read a number of academic journal articles about it and it has a good track record in terms of being an effective treatment. 

As Dolly suggests apparently it does work remotely so if you can find a T who offers it virtually you might give it a go.  There are quite a few T databases out there but A good one if you're in the US or Canada is Psychology Today's at https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/therapists.

Good luck - would love to hear how it goes if you do give it a try. 

[storyworld]

I know this is an old thread but found it searching the site. My therapist has mentioned this tool-procedure (not sure what to call it) a few times, and the very idea creates a great deal of anxiety within me. My understanding is that you must sort of "relive" hard things in order to reprocess them. I am afraid I cannot handle that. I also read that one must sort of let their mind "go" in this, without censor or filter or redirection, and I am afraid of that as well. I can't verbalize exactly what I'm afraid will happen. All I know is the thought scares me. (I also have read that the therapist will sometimes tap a client's legs, and the thought of that gives me anxiety as well, which is odd as I have no problems shaking hands or hugging people. Maybe it's because I have shown parts of myself to my therapist that I haven't to others? Or maybe I just got an anxiety stuck in my head that has no basis.

I know she won't do anything I'm not ready for, and she is very responsive to my comfort (and fear!) level. But the very idea that this might be on the horizon is creating ongoing anxiety now and makes me frequently contemplate stopping therapy.

[Kizzie]

Just my thoughts on this of course but from my perspective it's your choice if and when you want to go ahead.  You are in charge and hopefully if you tell your T the anxiety it is causing you she and you can have a discussion about taking it off the table so you can get your anxiety down. There may come a time when you're ready to try it or maybe not, up to you.   

[storyworld]

Thanks, Kizzie. I appreciate your perspective and thoughts.

[Armee]

I would NOT be ok with my T tapping me in any way at least not while processing traumatic materials.


I was very scared to try EMDR for all the reasons you put down. With some modifications it has worked well for me though.

Ask your T about flash emdr where you do not think about the trauma other than bringing it to the periphery of your mind and then focus on something positive or funny for the processing. It did not work well for me but it really is designed for exactly the situation you are in. It is supposed to make it more tolerable and you don't go into any detail. I think I am just an odd case where flash backfired for me.

I've done better with straightforward EMDR but modified to go very very slow, to do very short sets of eye movements, and to ground multiple times during the process. Its really helped to get rid of the negative thoughts and shame and self blame and helped me draw very necessary connections between the cognitive and limbic systems.

I would never do it with someone who only does emdr though. I want someone who can weave multiple other tools into the process and is not so cocky as to try to force a model onto me that doesn't work.

It sounds like your T is the good kind that could make this work for you. If you decide to try. And you can always evaluate and stop, at any time. I'm very happy with my therapist and how well therapy has worked for me. And we failed and made huge missteps multiple times. You repair the damage and take what you learned into the next approach. We aren't so fragile that we can't handle things not working. We are all actually pretty remarkably strong.

[Towhee]

This is just my own experience: I don't want to scare anyone off but I think it's good to share a broad array of experiences with something.  My own experience with it was terrible, though it wasn't helped by having a therapist who was inexperienced and had a very childlike personality.  I never even got past the prep work for it.  She tried to do something with me to get me more relaxed but it triggered a partial flashback and a dissociation; after that, just holding the buzzing paddles triggered the same response.  It also severely impaired my ability to trust her again.  Just thinking about it now brings back the feeling of being trapped.

Again, this was just my experience, and others have had a lot of healing and success with it.  But it isn't right for everyone.